On the Automatic Nature of Threat: Physiological and Evaluative Reactions to Survival-Threats Outside Conscious Perception

Like in the real world, the first impression a person leaves in a computer-mediated environment depends on his or her online appearance. The present study manipulates an avatar’s pupil size, eyeblink frequency, and the viewing angle to investigate whether nonverbal visual characteristics are responsible for the impression made. We assessed how participants (N = 56) evaluate these avatars in terms of different attributes. The findings show that avatars with large pupils and slow eye blink frequency are perceived as more sociable and more attractive. Compared to avatars seen in full frontal view or from above, avatars seen from below were rated as most sociable, self-confident, and attractive. Moreover, avatars’ pupil size and eyeblink frequency escape the viewer’s conscious perception but still influence how people evaluate them. The findings have wide-ranging applied implications for avatar design.

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Behavioral and electrophysiological dissociations between visual orienting and conscious perception

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e520592012-109 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Anthony J. Lambert ◽

Narisa E. Marrett ◽

Myoung-Ju Shin

Keyword(s):

Conscious Perception ◽

Visual Orienting

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Consciousness, Metacognition, & Perceptual Reality Monitoring

10.31234/osf.io/ckbyf ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Hakwan Lau

Keyword(s):

Epistemic Justification ◽

Order Theory ◽

Higher Order ◽

Belief Formation ◽

Reality Monitoring ◽

Conscious Perception ◽

Brute Fact ◽

Higher Order Theory ◽

Subjective Level

I introduce an empirically-grounded version of a higher-order theory of conscious perception. Traditionally, theories of consciousness either focus on the global availability of conscious information, or take conscious phenomenology as a brute fact due to some biological or basic representational properties. Here I argue instead that the key to characterizing the consciousness lies in its connections to belief formation and epistemic justification on a subjective level.

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Intentionalism, Cognition, and Representation

10.1093/oso/9780190854751.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

J. Christopher Maloney

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Mental Representation ◽

Phenomenal Character ◽

Conscious Perception ◽

Perceptual Representation ◽

Perceptual State ◽

Content Of Experience

This chapter continues consideration of reductive intentionalism without embracing the doctrine, framing it in the context of cognitive science. Cognition, including perception, is representation. An agent’s cognitive, perhaps perceptual, state is a relation binding the agent to a proposition by means of her mental representation. Intentionalism would explicate the phenomenal character of a perceiver's experience in terms of the content of her prevailing perceptual representation. While minimal intentionalism maintains that the phenomenal character of the perceiver's experience merely supervenes on her representation's content, maximal intentionalism would reduce character to content. For maximal intentionalism maintains that phenomenal character is simply what introspection finds. Yet, according to maximal intentionalism, introspection, when tuned to conscious perception, detects only the content of experience. Hence, the maximalist identifies phenomenal character with the content carried by perceptual representation.

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Chemo- and Optogenetic Strategies for the Elucidation of Pain Pathways

The Oxford Handbook of the Neurobiology of Pain ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190860509.013.33 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 816-832 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sascha R. A. Alles ◽

Anne-Marie Malfait ◽

Richard J. Miller

Keyword(s):

Chronic Pain ◽

Pain Response ◽

Conscious Perception ◽

Novel Therapies ◽

The Past ◽

Nociceptive Pathways ◽

Pain Pathways ◽

Technical Advances ◽

The Brain

Pain is not a simple phenomenon and, beyond its conscious perception, involves circuitry that allows the brain to provide an affective context for nociception, which can influence mood and memory. In the past decade, neurobiological techniques have been developed that allow investigators to elucidate the importance of particular groups of neurons in different aspects of the pain response, something that may have important translational implications for the development of novel therapies. Chemo- and optogenetics represent two of the most important technical advances of recent times for gaining understanding of physiological circuitry underlying complex behaviors. The use of these techniques for teasing out the role of neurons and glia in nociceptive pathways is a rapidly growing area of research. The major findings of studies focused on understanding circuitry involved in different aspects of nociception and pain are highlighted in this article. In addition, attention is drawn to the possibility of modification of chemo- and optogenetic techniques for use as potential therapies for treatment of chronic pain disorders in human patients.

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Harnessing Visible Representation to Mitigate Bias

Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1177/2372732220984800 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 27-33

Author(s):

Jessica L. Shropshire ◽

Kerri L. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Mental Representations ◽

Mental Image ◽

Status Quo ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Current Status ◽

Or Groups ◽

Evaluative Reactions

Numerous attempts to improve diversity by way of changing the hearts of decision makers have fallen short of the desired outcome. One underappreciated factor that contributes to bias resides not in decision makers’ hearts, but instead in their minds. People possess images, or mental representations, for specific roles and professions. Which mental image or representation springs spontaneously to mind depends on the current status quo within a field. Whether or not an individual or groups’ appearance matches visual stereotypes results in perceptually mediated preferences and prejudices, both of which harbor pernicious assumptions about who belongs in a professional setting and why. Leveraging these scientific insights can enact change. Shifting visible exemplars can change people’s mental representations and their heart’s evaluative reactions to others.

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Conscious perception and perceptual echoes: a binocular rivalry study

Neuroscience of Consciousness ◽

10.1093/nc/niab007 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2021 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Canhuang Luo ◽

Rufin VanRullen ◽

Andrea Alamia

Keyword(s):

Binocular Rivalry ◽

Visual Information ◽

Visual Stimulation ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Travelling Wave ◽

Alpha Power ◽

Conscious Perception ◽

Impulse Response Functions ◽

Band Frequency ◽

Underlying Mechanisms

Abstract Alpha rhythms (∼10Hz) in the human brain are classically associated with idling activities, being predominantly observed during quiet restfulness with closed eyes. However, recent studies demonstrated that alpha (∼10Hz) rhythms can directly relate to visual stimulation, resulting in oscillations, which can last for as long as one second. This alpha reverberation, dubbed perceptual echoes (PE), suggests that the visual system actively samples and processes visual information within the alpha-band frequency. Although PE have been linked to various visual functions, their underlying mechanisms and functional role are not completely understood. In this study, we investigated the relationship between conscious perception and the generation and the amplitude of PE. Specifically, we displayed two coloured Gabor patches with different orientations on opposite sides of the screen, and using a set of dichoptic mirrors, we induced a binocular rivalry between the two stimuli. We asked participants to continuously report which one of two Gabor patches they consciously perceived, while recording their EEG signals. Importantly, the luminance of each patch fluctuated randomly over time, generating random sequences from which we estimated two impulse-response functions (IRFs) reflecting the PE generated by the perceived (dominant) and non-perceived (suppressed) stimulus, respectively. We found that the alpha power of the PE generated by the consciously perceived stimulus was comparable with that of the PE generated during monocular vision (control condition) and higher than the PE induced by the suppressed stimulus. Moreover, confirming previous findings, we found that all PEs propagated as a travelling wave from posterior to frontal brain regions, irrespective of conscious perception. All in all our results demonstrate a correlation between conscious perception and PE, suggesting that the synchronization of neural activity plays an important role in visual sampling and conscious perception.

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