Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Visual Awareness Of Object Categories Require Attention?, Timothy S. Miller

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

A key question in the investigation of awareness is whether it can occur without attention, or vice versa. Most evidence to date suggests that attention is necessary for awareness of visual stimuli, but that attention can sometimes be present without corresponding aware-ness. However, there has been some evidence that natural scenes in general, and in particular scenes including animals, may not require visual attention for a participant to become aware of their gist. One relatively recent paradigm for providing evidence for animal awareness without attention (Li, VanRullen, Koch, & Perona, 2002) requires participants to perform an attention demanding primary task …