Although in recent years some studies have found evidence suggesting that working memory (WM) may operate on unconscious perceptual contents, decisive demonstrations of the existence of unconscious WM are lacking. In the present Registered Report, we replicate the first study on this topic by Soto et al. (Working memory without consciousness. Curr Biol 2011;21:R912-3.): a visual discrimination...
The study of consciousness is considered by many one of the most difficult contemporary scientific endeavors and confronts several methodological and theoretical challenges. A central issue that makes the study of consciousness so challenging is that, while the rest of science is concerned with problems that can be verified from a "third person" view (i.e., objectively), the study of...
Since the early experimental studies of the late 19th century, research on unconscious perception has been shaped by persistent methodological challenges and evolving experimental approaches aimed at demonstrating perception without awareness. In this review, we will discuss some of the most relevant challenges researchers have faced in demonstrating unconscious perception, and examine how...
Does a visual percept emerge to consciousness in a graded manner (i.e. evolving through increasing degrees of clarity), or according to a dichotomous, "all-or-none" pattern (i.e. abruptly transitioning from unawareness to awareness)? The level of processing hypothesis (LoP; B. Windey and A. Cleeremans, 2015) recently proposed a theoretical framework where the transition from unaware to aware...