Qualia structures collapse for geometric shapes, but not faces, when spatial attention is withdrawn
Elise G Rowe, Ken Takeda, Masafumi Oizumi, Joanita F D'Souza, Jeroen J A Van Boxtel, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
PsyArXiv November 17, 2025 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/x3pcn_v5 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study |
|---|---|
| Key findings | Withdrawing top-down attention collapsed the relational structures of qualia for letters and red/green bisected disks, but not for faces, as measured by a novel optimal transport alignment technique. Alignment accuracy was high for face qualia structures across attention conditions but not for letters and disks. The authors argue this approach can elucidate structural properties of consciousness. |
Abstract
The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to examine whether relational structures of qualia are altered by top-down attentional amplification. Under the same physical input, withdrawing attention collapsed the structures of qualia of letters (N=14) and red/green bisected disks (N=14), but not of faces (N=13), as quantified via a novel unsupervised optimal transport alignment technique. Alignment accuracy was high for face qualia structures obtained under the fully versus poorly attended conditions but not for the letters and disks. Our novel approach that combines similarity ratings, quantitative alignment and attentional perturbation is a powerful new approach to elucidate the structural properties of consciousness.