Replicating the unconscious working memory effect: a multisite Registered Report.
Alicia Franco-Martínez, Ricardo Rey-Sáez, Jesús Adrián-ventura, Pietro Amerio, Ana Baciero, Amine Bennis, Fredrik Bergström, Axel Cleeremans, Laura Contu, Roberto Dell'Acqua, Xinping Deng, Fatma Nur Dolu, Filippo Gambarota, Yi Gao, Francisco Garre-Frutos, Anna Grubert, Ana Hernando, José A Hinojosa, Asaf Hoory, Zhikun Hou, Shao-Min Hung, Aine Ito, Mikel Jimenez, Alexandra I Kosachenko, Merve Kulaksız, Daryl Y H Lee, Elmas Merve Malas, Simone Malejka, Pedro R Montoro, Liad Mudrik, Yuri G Pavlov, Gabriele Pesimena, Antonio Prieto, Dobromir Rahnev, Lais Ringenberg, Alejandro Sandoval-Lentisco, Akira Sarodo, Maor Schreiber, Paola Sessa, Pablo Solana, Dmitrii A Tarasov, Miriam Tortajada, Kai Xue, Ziqian Xue, Yunxuan Zheng, Merve Çinici, David R Shanks, David Soto, Miguel A Vadillo
Neuroscience of consciousness January 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/nc/niaf046 via PubMed
Summary
Working memory may operate on unconscious perceptual contents, though it remains linked to conscious perception. A large, multisite replication (19 labs, 531 participants, 720 trials) of Soto et al. (2011) found above-chance accuracy (.55) on a visual discrimination task when participants reported not seeing the subliminal Gabor grating. Performance correlated positively with cue detection sensitivity (r = .228), and the regression intercept was significantly above chance (β₀ = .521). The study provides an open-access dataset and confirms that measures were reliable and valid, supporting the existence of unconscious working memory.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Registered report, replication, multisite experimental study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 531 |
| Population | Participants from 19 laboratories |
| Keywords | Registered report Multisite Perceptual awareness Replication Unconscious |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key finding | Working memory can operate on unconscious representations, as shown by above-chance accuracy on unseen cue trials, though performance remains positively associated with perceptual sensitivity. |
Abstract
Although in recent years some studies have found evidence suggesting that working memory (WM) may operate on unconscious perceptual contents, decisive demonstrations of the existence of unconscious WM are lacking. In the present Registered Report, we replicate the first study on this topic by Soto et al. (Working memory without consciousness. Curr Biol 2011;21:R912-3.): a visual discrimination task asking participants to report the direction in which a subliminal Gabor grating was rotated after a 2-s delay. We acquired a multisite sample from 19 laboratories, with a larger number of participants (N = 531) and trials (720 in two sessions) than those typically used in previous studies. As a result, a large-sample, international, and open-access dataset is now available for researchers and future analyses. Furthermore, some minimal baseline requirements were guaranteed for the experimental task (i.e. number of valid trials, motivation, and consistent labels for the Perceptual Awareness Scale). The results showed (1) above-chance WM performance in cue-present trials reported as unseen (.55 accuracy), (2) a significant positive correlation between WM performance and cue detection sensitivity (r = .228), and (3) a significant above-chance intercept in the regression of performance on sensitivity (β 0 = .521). These findings suggest that WM can operate on unconscious representations, although it remains positively associated with perceptual sensitivity. Crucially, because measurement error could compromise the interpretation of these three results, we provide evidence for our measures' excellent reliability and, more fundamentally, for their validity.