The mechanisms of selective attention in phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness and cognition January 1, 2023 Salvatore G Chiarella, Luca Simione, Monia D'Angiò et al. 9 citations
Selective attention produces both costs and benefits in iconic memory and fragile visual short-term memory, which are linked to phenomenal consciousness. In three experiments using a retro-cue paradigm, attentional costs disrupted visual maintenance at longer delays. Reducing the memory array exposure from 250 ms to 100 ms prevented participants from selecting objects based on their priorities, indicating a bottom-up factor. A pattern mask presented before transfer to visual working memory reduced overall performance but preserved the priority effect. These findings suggest that fragile-VSTM and iconic memory play distinct roles in feature-based attentional selection, with implications for phenomenal consciousness before conscious access.