IngentaConnect Implications of Inattentional Blindness for "Enactive'' Theories ...

Abstract:

Mack and Rock show evidence that no conscious perception occurs without a prior attentive act. Subjects already executing attention tasks tend to neglect visible elements extraneous to the attentional task, apparently lacking even better-than-chance ``implicit perception,'' except in certain cases where the unattended stimulus is a meaningful word or has unique pre-tuned salience similar to that of meaningful words. This is highly consistent with ``enactive'' notions that consciousness requires selective attention via emotional subcortical and limbic motivational activation as it influences anterior attention mechanisms. Occipital activation without consciousness suggests that motivated search, enacted through the organism's subcortical motivational functions, is needed before visual stimulation engenders consciousness. This enactive view – that searching for, rather than receiving or processing input is the basis of consciousness – was slow in gaining acceptance lacking empirical evidence of this kind, combined with the stimulus-response assumption that brain events subserving perceptual consciousness must result from transformation of perceptual input rather than from the organism's self-regulated activity as manifested through subcortical activity. Implicit perception occurring with word priming is ``paradoxical'' according to Mack and Rock, suggesting late selection for attention after extensive unconscious processing, while most trials involving nonverbal rather than verbal images might suggest earlier selection, since unattended objects are unseen, apparently even implicitly. This paper argues that anterior and subcortical motivational mechanisms play an important role in early selection; posterior mechanisms then unconsciously enhance signals;if data survive early gating and corticothalamic enhancement, then still further anterior-limbic loops motivatedly activate ``image schemas'' resonating with posterior nonconscious processing; at that point, consciousness occurs.

Keywords: attention; consciousness; corticothalamic loops; dynamical systems; emotion; enactive theory; implicit perception; perception; priming; self-organization

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Campus P.O. Box 81, Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA 30314, U.S.A.

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Implications of Inattentional Blindness for "Enactive'' Theories of Consciousness