Unconscious information processing in working memory
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[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI SYSTEM AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Conventionally, the contents of working memory (WM) have been viewed as tightly coupled with conscious awareness. However, recent experimental findings regarding unconscious visual perception indicate that items suppressed from awareness may also be maintained in WM (Soto, Mantyla, & Silvanto, 2011, 2011; Bergstrom & Eriksson, 2015). To explore this phenomenon, my colleagues and I assessed behavioral performance and the contralateral delay activity (CDA, an index of working memory load), while subjects viewed memory items (Gabor patches or greyscale rectangular bars) on one half of a stereoscopic display. Some memory items were suppressed from conscious sight using continuous flash suppression (CFS) while others remained visible. After a retention interval, participants decided whether the probed memory item (either suppressed or visible) was of a changed orientation. In Experiments 1 and 2, behavioral results indicated that change detection for visible memory items was significantly impaired by increasing the load of suppressed items. Psychophysiological results in Experiment 2 indicated CDA amplitudes were smaller following the presentation of the suppressed items, suggesting that their presence displaced previously encoded visible items from WM. We infer that suppressed items interfered with maintenance of the visible items without being stored in WM themselves.
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