Subjective awareness scale length influences the prevalence,not the presence,of graded conscious states |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa;2. ACSENT Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town, South Africa;1. Department of Internal Medicine, Medstar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA;2. Department of Intervention Cardiology, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA;3. Department of Nephrology, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA;1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, McLaren Greater Lansing, Lansing, Michigan, U.S.A.;2. Department of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, Seattle Children''s, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.;1. Université de Toulouse, UPS, Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition, Toulouse, France;2. CerCo, CNRS UMR 5549, Toulouse, France;3. Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany;4. Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark;5. Consciousness Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland;6. Institute of Psychology, University of Münster, Germany |
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Abstract: | There is an ongoing debate about the graded or dichotomous form of visual consciousness. Studies involved in the disagreement have typically employed subjective awareness ratings in psychophysical experiments. Variations in scale length have made comparisons across studies difficult and have even been suspected of influencing conclusions about the form of consciousness. We tested the proposal that a 21-point awareness scale produces dichotomous awareness state reports. The experiment described in this article randomly assigned participants to use one of four scale lengths used in previous studies in a backward masking task. Our findings suggest that all scales indicate the presence of graded awareness states, but that the resulting proportion of degraded state reports differed across the scales. Consequently, we argue that the decision of whether the form of consciousness observed in a given study is dichotomous or graded is dependent on an interpretation of the relative degree of degradation. |
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Keywords: | Consciousness Awareness Graded Dichotomous Psychophysics Measurement |
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