Oculomotor freezing indicates conscious detection free of decision bias
Alex L. White, James C. Moreland, Martin Rolfs
Abstract
Sometimes a visual stimulus reaches awareness, and sometimes it does not. To understand why, we need objective, bias-free measures of awareness. We discovered that a reflexive freezing of small eye movements indicates when an observer detects a stimulus. Furthermore, when we biased observers' decisions to report seeing the stimulus, the oculomotor response was unaltered. This suggests that the threshold for conscious perception is independent of the decision criterion and is revealed by oculomotor freezing.
Topics & Concepts
Stimulus (psychology)PsychologyPerceptionSensory systemSaccadic maskingEye movementCognitive psychologyMicrosaccadeAudiologyNeuroscienceMedicineVisual perception and processing mechanismsNeural dynamics and brain functionNeural and Behavioral Psychology Studies