From 2D to 3D: enhanced access to human conscious awareness
Most of our interactions with our environment involve manipulating real, 3D objects. Accordingly, 3D objects seem to enjoy preferential processing compared with 2D images, for example in capturing attention or being better remembered. But are they also more readily perceived? Thus far, the possible preferred access of real, 3D objects to awareness could not be empirically tested, as suppression was only applied to on-screen stimuli; Here, using a variant of Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) with augmented reality goggles (“real-life” CFS), we managed to suppress both real, 3D objects and their 2D representations. In healthy young adults, real objects escaped suppression faster than their photographs. Using 3D printing, we also showed that this only holds for meaningful objects, while no difference was found for meaningless, novel ones. This suggests that the effect is uniquely mediated by affordances, shown here to be evoked by 3D objects even before these emerge to awareness.