Is auditory awareness graded or dichotomous: Electrophysiological correlates of consciousness at different depths of stimulus processing.

The level-of-processing (LoP) hypothesis, which describes how awareness of visual stimuli can be either gradual or all-or-none depending on feature depth, was tested in hearing for the first time. Participants heard words from different categories spoken in different pitches near the perceptual threshold. Results indicate that LoP also applies to the auditory modality. The auditory awareness negativity (AAN) was an early correlate of awareness independent of LoP, while late positivity (LP) was modulated by awareness, performance accuracy, and level of processing.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The level-of-processing (LoP) hypothesis postulates that transition from unaware to aware visual stimuli is either graded or dichotomous depending on the depth of stimulus processing. Humans can be progressively aware of the low-level features, such as colors or shapes, while the high-level features, such as semantic category, enter consciousness in an all-or none fashion. Unlike in vision, sounds always unfold in time, which might require mechanisms dissimilar from visual processing. We tested the LoP hypothesis in hearing for the first time by presenting participants with words of different categories, spoken in different pitches near the perceptual threshold. We also assessed whether different electrophysiological correlates of consciousness, the auditory awareness negativity (AAN) and late positivity (LP), were associated with LoP. Our findings indicate that LoP also applies to the auditory modality. AAN is an early correlate of awareness independent of LoP, while LP was modulated by awareness, performance accuracy and the level of processing.