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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
The Rubber Hand Illusion: Top-Down Attention Modulates Embodiment, Rémi Thériault, Mathieu Landry, Amir Raz
The Rubber Hand Illusion: Top-Down Attention Modulates Embodiment, Rémi Thériault, Mathieu Landry, Amir Raz
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) creates distortions of body ownership through multimodal integration of somatosensory and visual inputs. This illusion largely rests on bottom-up (automatic multisensory and perceptual integration) mechanisms. However, the relative contribution from top-down factors, such as controlled processes involving attentional regulation, remains unclear. Following previous work that highlights the putative influence of higher-order cognition in the RHI, we aimed to further examine how modulations of working memory load and task instructions—two conditions engaging top-down cognitive processes—influence the experience of the RHI, as indexed by a number of psychometric dimensions. Relying on exploratory factor analysis for assessing this …
Filled/Non-Filled Pairs: An Empirical Challenge To The Integrated Information Theory Of Consciousness, Amber R. Hopkins, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
Filled/Non-Filled Pairs: An Empirical Challenge To The Integrated Information Theory Of Consciousness, Amber R. Hopkins, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Perceptual filling-in for vision is the insertion of visual properties (e.g., color, contour, luminance, or motion) into one’s visual field, when those properties have no corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces and provides preliminary empirical support for filled/non-filled pairs, pairs of images that appear identical, yet differ by amount of filling-in. It is argued that such image pairs are important to the experimental testing of theories of consciousness. We review recent experimental research and conclude that filling-in involves brain activity with relatively high integrated information (Φ) compared to veridical visual perceptions. We then present filled/non-filled pairs as …
Response To Commentaries On ‘Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness’, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog
Response To Commentaries On ‘Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness’, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
In consciousness research, we have a very large number of theories, which exceeds by far the number of theories in other fields. We recently presented a set of criteria for evaluating and comparing theories of consciousness, and then applied the criteria to a number of different theories. Our publication sparked strong responses as evident by the many comments published in Cognitive Neuroscience (this issue). Overall, there seems to be consensus that a theory of consciousness (ToC) needs to have an unconscious alternative, but other criteria sparked controversy. The hottest debate is to what extent consciousness needs to work with purely …
Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog
Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
Consciousness is now a well-established field of empirical research. A large body of experimental results has been accumulated and is steadily growing. In parallel, many Theories of Consciousness (ToCs) have been proposed. These theories are diverse in nature, ranging from computational to neurophysiological and quantum theoretical approaches. This contrasts with other fields of natural science, which host a smaller number of competing theories. We suggest that one reason for this abundance of extremely different theories may be the lack of stringent criteria specifying how empirical data constrains ToCs. First, we argue that consciousness is a well-defined topic from an empirical …
The Unfolding Argument: Why Iit And Other Causal Structure Theories Cannot Explain Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Kathryn Hess, Michael H. Herzog
The Unfolding Argument: Why Iit And Other Causal Structure Theories Cannot Explain Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Kathryn Hess, Michael H. Herzog
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
How can we explain consciousness? This question has become a vibrant topic of neuroscience research in recent decades. A large body of empirical results has been accumulated, and many theories have been proposed. Certain theories suggest that consciousness should be explained in terms of brain functions, such as accessing information in a global workspace, applying higher order to lower order representations, or predictive coding. These functions could be realized by a variety of patterns of brain connectivity. Other theories, such as Information Integration Theory (IIT) and Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), identify causal structure with consciousness. For example, according to …