Phenomenal awareness can emerge without attention

Phenomenal awareness can emerge without attention

In a recent debate, the views that top-down attention is necessary for consciousness (Cohen et al., 2012a,b) and that consciousness is independent of top-down attention (Tsuchiya et al., 2012) have clashed. Here, we list the overlooked or ignored arguments that should be considered before deciding that consciousness is inevitably the result of attention. The issue of relation of bottom-up atten...

Object-based attention without awareness.

Attention and awareness are often considered to be related. Some forms of attention can, however, facilitate the processing of stimuli that remain unseen. It is unclear whether this dissociation extends beyond selection on the basis of primitive properties, such as spatial location, to situations in which there are more complex bases for attentional selection. The experiment described here show...

Endogenous Orienting of Attention without Awareness

This study investigated the role of awareness in endogenous orienting of visual attention. Twenty-five subjects performed a Covert Attention Task, in which target stimuli were preceded by masked and unmasked symbolic central cues (i.e., digits). Results showed a facilitation effect in both the aware and unaware condition, suggesting that a symbolic cue was able to induce an endogenous orienting...

Attention without awareness: A Brief Review

Can Lawlike Rules Emerge without the Intervention of Legislators?

The paper shows that in an artificial society lawlike rules emerge “as a result of individual action but without being designed by any individual” agents (Hayek, 1944, p. 288) and discusses earlier literature on the topic. The first example that this paper uses is an artificial society of car drivers moving between their homes and their working places on streets with two lanes crossing each oth...