The scope of unconscious processing remains hotly debated, driven by diverse methods for manipulating and measuring perceptual awareness. Through dialogue among researchers with varied theoretical backgrounds, ten recommendations and nine outstanding issues are provided for designing experimental paradigms, analyzing data, and reporting results. These guidelines aim to evoke discussion about norms in studying unconscious processes and help researchers make informed decisions. While some recommendations may not align with existing approaches and will likely evolve, they are intended to foster a more convergent understanding of the extent and limits of unconscious processing.
The attentional blink is a limitation in perceiving two events close in time. Three experiments disentangled the roles of spatial attention, conscious perception, and working memory in causing this blink. Allocating spatial attention to the first target (T1) was neither necessary nor sufficient for eliciting a blink, but consciously perceiving T1 was necessary yet not sufficient. When T1 was task irrelevant, conscious perception triggered a blink only when T1 matched the attentional set for the second target (T2). The authors conclude that consciously perceiving a task-relevant event causes the blink, possibly because it triggers encoding into working memory, with implications for the distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness.