Psychoblog

Wir möchten Sie herzlich zum Forschungskolloquium Experimentelle Psychologie

am Mittwoch, den 24. Mai 2023,

um 14:15 Uhr im GEMI, Raum 1.140 einladen.

Prof. Dr. Bruno Breitmeyer (PhD, University of Houston)

In-depth and “Superficial” Explorations of Conscious and Unconscious Vision

 The levels of conscious and unconscious vision comprise the primary topic of the talk; and, time permitting, the „superficiality“ of conscious vision will also be addressed. After a brief description of the theoretical rationale for studying levels of visual processing, some problems are noted when continuous flash suppression (CFS), currently the most popular method of suppressing conscious vision, is used. CFS, while not useful for in-depth exploration of different levels of unconscious processing, can be used to study the transitions from unconscious to conscious vision of certain low-level visual phenomena, among them, afterimage formation. Different masking methods provide a better toolkit to explore correspondingly different levels of conscious and unconscious processing. Moreover, using different types of visual illusions, the rationale can also be applied to different levels of processing when conscious vision is not suppressed. Steven Grossberg’s model of visual processing motivates a look at why during unconscious visual processing form or shape properties of a stimulus are processed faster than surface properties, whereas this asynchrony reverses when conscious vision occurs. Implications of these temporal processing differences between shape and surface are discussed in the context of 1) long-standing differences raised by scientists and philosophers between „primary“ and „secondary“ properties of visually perceived objects and 2) Semir Zeki’s notion of „micro-consciousnesses“.

Wir freuen uns über eine rege Beteiligung.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Prof. Dr. Uwe Mattler