Talk by Prof. Dr. Uwe Mattler: "How Subconscious Signals Shape Conscious Experience: The Motion-Bridging Effect"

A substantial body of research demonstrates we can be affected by stimuli  we are not aware of because we failed to attend to them. These are stimuli that if attended are experienced. However, there are also stimuli that remain inaccessible to consciousness although observers are attempting to attend to them, but nevertheless reveal they have been registered because of their effect on other perceptual or cognitive processes. We discuss an illusion that demonstrates a stimulus of this kind. Observers are presented with a circular outline produced by the very rapid rotation of a set of points. When asked to report the direction of this rotation they are completely unable to do so. Nevertheless, an illusory rotation in a subsequent stationary stimulus shows that the visual system has encoded this rotational direction despite the absence of conscious awareness. According to recent experiments there are multiple processes that allow unconscious signals to shape conscious perceptual experience. These findings indicate that the range of the sensory signals involved in constructing perceptual reality can be larger than conscious awareness indicates. 

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