Dissociation between attention and consciousensss

1. 2017 June 29 @ USyd Nao Tsuchiya 土谷尚嗣
School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University
Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience
Consciousness without attention and large capacity
conscious memory, investigated with metacognition

2. My lab’s goal: to reveal the physical basis
of consciousness
4 empirical approaches:
1. Boundary of consciousness
- vs non-conscious processing
- vs unconscious states
2. Relationship between consciousness and associated processes
- attention, working memory, metacognition, expectation, report
3.Analysis of multi-electrode neural recordings
- fly LFP to human ECoG, EEG, fMRI
4. Empirical testing of the theory of consciousness
- integrated information theory of consciousness
- predictive coding / free energy

3. The neuronal basis of
consciousness
• Relationship between consciousness and other
cognitive processes (e.g., attention, memory,
reports, access)

4. • Why are relationships between consciousness
and other cognitive processes (e.g., attention)
important?
• Attention may be a key to understand
consciousness (e.g., Posner 1994 PNAS)
• Attention may be a confounding factor,
which needs to be carefully controlled to
study consciousness (e.g.,Tse et al 2005 PNAS)

5. Questions
• Is attention similar to consciousness?
• Without attention, can we see?
• Without seeing, can we attend?
• For a given percept or behavior, are the effects
of attending the same as the effects of being
conscious of?

6. What is attention?
Every one knows what attention is. It is the
taking possession by the mind, in clear and
vivid form, of one out of what seem
several simultaneously possible objects or
trains of thought. It implies withdrawal
from some things in order to deal effectively
with others.
William James (1890)

7. What is attention?
• (alertness, arousal)
• selective attention
• (bottom-up/exogenous attention)
- (stimulus-driven, automatic, task-independent)
• “Top-down/endogenous attention”
• appears to be related to consciousness
-Volitionally controlled, task-dependent, goal-
oriented
-Spatial, feature-based, object-based, temporal

8. • consciousness
• (levels of consciousness)
• (a single moment of unified experience)
• contents of consciousness
• =raw feeling, qualia
• phenomenal, not access, consciousness
What is consciousness
(=awareness)?

9. Not necessarily give rise to
consciousness
Gives rise to
consciousness
can occur
without top-
down attention
Afterimages
Rapid vision (<120ms)
Zombie behaviors
Storage of premitive information
Local, weak integration
Iconic & fragile memory
Partial reportability
Gist, animal and gender
detection in dual tasks
requires top-
down attention
Pop-out
Priming
Adaptation
Object processing
Visual search
Thoughts
Eye-of-origin
Storage in working memory
Detection & discrimination of
unexpected or unfamiliar stimuli
Full reportability
Global, strong integration
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Dissociation between consciousness and top-down attention

10. Not necessarily give rise to
consciousness
Gives rise to
consciousness
can occur
without top-
down attention
Afterimages
Rapid vision (<120ms)
Zombie behaviors
Storage of premitive information
Local, weak integration
Iconic & fragile memory
Partial reportability
Gist, animal and gender
detection in dual tasks
requires top-
down attention
Pop-out
Priming
Adaptation
Object processing
Visual search
Thoughts
Eye-of-origin
Storage in working memory
Detection & discrimination of
unexpected or unfamiliar stimuli
Full reportability
Global, strong integration
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Dissociation between consciousness and top-down attention
Most contentious!
Lots of TICS papers:
Dehaene et al 2006, Kouider et al 2010, Lau & Rosenthal 2011
Cohen & Dennett 2011, Cohen et al 2012, 2016,
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007, Block 2005, 2011, Lamme 2003, Tsuchiya,
Wilke, Frassle, Lamme 2015,
Haun, Koch, Tononi, Tsuchiya 2016 Neuroscience of Consciousness

11. Topic 1: Dual task paradigm
ØDual-Task paradigm (Braun, 1994)
L
L
LL
T
Central performance
Peripheralperformance
Attention-Operating Characteristic
(AOC) plots (Sperling, 1978)

12. THE DUALTASK:
Reddy et al., 2004
Central letter task
Peripheral gender task
Stimulus onset
asynchrony
Modify SOA so Single-task performance ≥ 75%
Compare dual-task performance

14. THE DUALTASK:
Reddy et al., 2004
Central performance (%)
Peripheralperformance(%)
chancechance

15. THE DUALTASK:
Discriminations with/without attention
file://localhost/.file/
id=6571367.15996158
(Tsuchiya & Koch, 2015)
Top-down attention
not required
Top-down attention
required

16. STRENGTHS OFTHE DUALTASK:
• Same stimuli with/without attention
• Task performance controlled for single task and directly
compared to dual task
• Simple SOA manipulation
• Change seen in dual-task results?
• YES: task trade-off
• NO: arguably no cost of attentional constraint

17. Two critical questions
Q1. To what degree are peripheral stimuli
consciously perceived?
• To determine whether the gist percept is
conscious in the dual-task studies we need
some more direct measure of the participant’s
internal state… an experiment that has not yet
been performed
(Jennings, 2015)
• Use metacognition as a probe for
consciousness

18. Manipulate SOA such that single-task
performance remains at ~75% accuracy
METHODS:
Dual-Task

19. Two critical questions
Q2.What is the role of extended training?
• Typically, previous dual-task trained subjects
for 6-12 hours before data collection
• Use QUEST staircase to reduce training

20. Reddy et al., 2004

21. OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE
Gender:Single & DualTasks
Letter Task (Type I AUC)
PeripheralTask(TypeIAUC)
Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4
Results averaged for 8 subjects, central task always on x-axis

22. METHODS:
Experiment 2:Disks

23. OBJECTIVE PERFORMANCE
Gender vs.Disks
Letter Task (Type I AUC)
PeripheralTask(TypeIAUC)
Gender can be discriminated in the near absence of attention; disks cannot
Letter Task (Type I AUC)
PeripheralTask(TypeIAUC)

24. Interim conclusion:
asThe results of Reddy et al. (2004) have been replicated
Gender discrimination in the near absence of attention
is associated with insight
Critically, we have achieved this with very limited training

25. CONFIDENCE
Gender vs.Disks
Letter Task (Confidence,1:4)
PeripheralTask(Confidence,1:4)
Under dual-task conditions, confidence for disks dissociates from accuracy
Letter Task (Confidence,1:4)
PeripheralTask(Confidence,1:4)

26. Metacognitive accuracy
• Quantifies relationship between accuracy and confidence
• Assures subjects have conscious access to the memory
• We used Type 2 ROC methods (Galvin et al 2003 PBR)
Confidence
Accuracy(%)
High Metacognition
Confidence
Accuracy(%)
Low Metacognition

27. METACOGNITION
Gender vs.Disks
Metacognition is lost for disks under dual-task conditions
Letter Task (Type II AUROC*)
PeripheralTask(TypeIIAUROC*)
Letter Task (Type II AUROC*)
PeripheralTask(TypeIIAUROC*)

28. Conclusion:
as
Gender discrimination in the near absence of attention
is associated with conscious insight
These results are achieved with very limited training

29. Is face discrimination possible
because it attracts bottom-up spatial attention?

30. 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65
Central Type II AUC
0.5
0.55
0.6
0.65
PeripheralTypeIIAUC
Metacognition: Blended
Disk conditions
Face conditions
0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8
Central Type I AUC
0.5
0.55
0.6
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
PeripheralTypeIAUC
Objective Performance: Blended
Disk conditions
Face conditions

31. 1 2 3
Central Confidence(1:4)
1
2
3
PeripheralConfidence(1:4)
Confidence: Blended
Correct
Incorrect
Disk conditions
Face conditions

32. Is face discrimination possible
because it attracts bottom-up spatial
attention?
- No

33. THE DUALTASK:
Discriminations with/without attention
file://localhost/.file/
id=6571367.15996158
(Tsuchiya & Koch, 2015)
Top-down attention
not required
Top-down attention
required

34. What’s the possible mechanisms that explain
both conscious perception without attention and
conscious perception that relies on attention?
1. Differential latency of iconic/fragile memory depending on the
neural sites of processing (Houtkamp & Braun 2009 JCog Neuro)
2. Transient change of the pooling size for crowding?
(Yeshurun & Carrasco 1998 Nature)
3. Qualia - Fundamental perceptual unit?

35. Topic 2:
Conscious perception in iconic and fragile memory
• Is our impression of rich conscious
phenomenology at a single glance illusory?
• Sperling’s experiment (1960)

36. Topic 1:
Conscious perception in iconic and fragile memory
• Sperling’s experiment (1960)
• de Gardelle 2009 Consciousness & Cognition
• Partial information / statistical summary filled in by
expectation? (Kouider et al 2010, Cohen 2016)
• Inflated by poor attention? (Lau & Rosenthal 2011)
• Follow up - Fragile short-term memory
• Landman et al 2003Vis Res, Pinto et al 2013 PBR, Sligte
et al 2008 PLoS One

37. How much do we see and remember
in natural visual processing
across eye movements?
• We should remember well:
• memory will allow us for efficient visual search
(Klein 2000)
• memory will help representing vivid impression
of outside world — consistent with subjective
impression of seeing an entire scene

38. We do NOT see and remember
in natural visual processing
across eye movements
• Inattentional blindness (Mack & Rock 1998)
• Change blindness (Simons & Rensink 2005 TICS)
• Poor integration of information across saccades
(Irwin & Andrews 1996,Wolfe 1999)
• — only unto 3-4 items, not really sufficient to
support rich phenomenology
• Largely, memory of rejected items during visual search
is unknown

39. How much do we see and remember
in natural visual processing
across eye movements?
• Conscious memory of fixated and rejected
visual items during search
Kaunitz, Rowe, Tsuchiya 2016 Psych Sci

40. Kaunitz, Rowe, Tsuchiya 2016 Psych Sci

41. Kaunitz, Rowe, Tsuchiya 2016 Psych Sci

43. • Under the dual task condition (the primary task -
visual search), each face was very briefly fixated
(<250ms)
• Rejected upright faces in visual search is
remembered >70% at least up to 7 items
• No sign of memory decay
• Highly distinct patterns for inverted faces
• Were upright faces remembered consciously?
• Priming?
• Unconscious working memory? (Soto et al 2011)

44. Memory of rejected items are consciously accessible
Kaunitz, Rowe, Tsuchiya 2016 Psych Sci

45. Fixation duration of faces has little effects on memory
Objective memory performance
(Type 1 AUC)
Metacognitive accuracy
(Type 2 AUC)
Kaunitz, Rowe, Tsuchiya 2016 Psych Sci

46. Conclusion & Discussion
• Upright faces can be consciously
remembered at ~70% accuracy with no sign
of memory limit/decay up to 7 faces, even
with <200ms fixation
• Memory accompanies with metacognition
• Contrasting results with inverted faces
• Consistent withVandenbroucke 2014 Psych Sci
• Similar metacognition for sensory and
working memory

47. Conclusion & Discussion
• Why can we remember a lot of faces?
• What is special about upright face?
• faster, more efficient search? lower
memory load? longer fixation? -> NO

48. Speculations and future
questions
• How many faces can we remember?
• Which particular faces are better remembered?
• Similarity with the target?
• Is our temporally/spatially unbounded memory very
rich?
• Is direct and active fixation critical?
• Is the use of novel pictures critical? (Endress &
Potter 2014)

49. Overall conclusion
• Richness of sensory memory and
perception without top-down attention
investigated by metacognition
• There are some classes of visual stimuli
that are preferentially processed and stored
with little help of attention