Individual differences in prioritization for consciousness and the conscious detection of changes.
Consciousness and cognition March 1, 2025 Gal R Chen, Yuval Harris, Ran R Hassin
People differ reliably in how quickly non-conscious visual stimuli enter awareness, a trait linked to later cognitive and emotional processes. Two experiments tested whether this prioritization speed relates to noticing changes in a change blindness task. In the first experiment (97 participants), faster prioritization correlated with better change detection across multiple measures. A preregistered replication (99 participants) confirmed this correlation and showed it was not explained by variability in other perceptual-decision tasks. The findings suggest that the speed of becoming aware of stimuli is tightly connected to conscious experiences in other situations.