Commentary On Tsikandilakis Et Al. (2025)—Subtleties of Awareness Help Explain Discrepancies Between Conscious and Unconscious Perception Interpretations: Implications for Researchers and Their Participants

The debate about whether unconscious processing exists has persisted for over 2,000 years, and within psychology for more than a century. This commentary highlights contributions from signal detection theory, which the author has used for over 30 years, and notes that interest in unconscious processing has grown and gained respect in psychology and related fields. The controversy remains unresolved. The author suggests ideas for progress, partly drawn from recent work, and emphasizes that weak or fragmentary conscious experiences of masked stimuli may confound interpretations of unconscious perception.

Study at a glance

Abstract

As Tsikandilakis et al. (2025) illustrate, an intense back and forth scientific debate on the existence and scope of unconscious processing has existed for at least 2000 years and within the field of psychology for well over 100 years. The focus of my commentary highlights important contributions from signal detection theory, which my work was based upon, beginning over 30 years ago (Haase, 1994). Much more research has been done in the last 30 years as interest in the topic has grown and achieved a higher degree of respect within psychology and related disciplines. The controversy is obviously not resolved, but ideas are offered for making progress, some of which are emphasized in Tsikandilakis et al. (2025). Other approaches may have merit as well, based on experimental and observational data that acknowledge and emphasize the importance of subjective principles such as weak or fragmentary conscious experiences of masked prime stimuli that continue to “haunt” interpretations of unconscious perception.