Consciously detecting and recognizing a past visual word after its sensory trace is gone
Daphne Rimsky Robert, Matteo Lisi, Kévin Nguy, Roxane Jannin, Thomas Hardy, Nathan Beraud, Claire Sergent
Communications Psychology June 9, 2026 DOI: 10.1038/s44271-026-00478-9 via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractConscious perception of a word's meaning can occur even when its visual features are inaccessible. In an experiment, participants viewed briefly flashed, visually masked words. When a semantically related spoken word followed, they could better detect and identify the previous word but could not report its letter casing or screen position. This suggests that a semantic representation can reach awareness via retro-cueing after sensory details are masked, supporting theories that conscious access relies on a secondary broadcasting process largely independent of early sensory buildup.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Experimental study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Sensory system Masking illustration Trace psycholinguistics Synesthesia Consciousness |
| Key finding | Retro-cueing with a semantically related auditory word improved detection and identification of a visually masked word but not its visual features, indicating that semantic representations can reach awareness independently of low-level sensory information. |
Abstract
What is the role of sensory processing in conscious perception? Current theories of consciousness are divided on this question. Some propose that conscious perception arises during the buildup of sensory representations. Others argue for a secondary process that broadcasts these representations to higher-level areas. This second view makes a counter-intuitive prediction: one could consciously perceive abstract representations untied to any low-level sensory feature. We tested this prediction by combining visual masking with retrospective cueing. We found that when visually masked words were followed by a semantically related auditory word, participants were better at detecting this past word and reporting its identity, but were strikingly unable to report its visual features (letter casing or position on screen). This suggests that retro-cueing can help a semantic representation reach awareness even after the associated sensory information has been masked. The mechanisms of conscious access might thus be largely independent of early sensory build-up.