Overview
The project explores whether conscious visual experience of a certain cue is affected by the specificity of the action associated with that cue.
Method
1. Participants will undergo a learning task in the form of instrumental conditioning, where one of three cues is paired with either action 1, action 2, or no action, in two within-subject conditions (rendered subliminal with continuous flash suppression (CFS), and supraliminal).
2. Following the learning task in both conditions, participants will undergo a breakthrough-CFS task (bCFS; Jiang, Costello & He, 2007).
Hypotheses
1. Learning of the cue-action association will be more robust in the supraliminal condition than in the subliminal condition, as indexed by proportions of correct responses.
2. Access to visual consciousness, as measured by bCFS will be facilitated through activation of the corresponding prediction of the cue-action association, instantiated in the learning task. Where the cue presented is congruent with the action required to make the response, interocular suppression is hypothesised to be overcome faster than where the presented cue is incongruent with the action required.
No directional predictions are made regarding cues unrelated to actions.