Working memory biasing of visual perception without awareness

Previous research has demonstrated that the contents of visual working memory can bias visual processing in favor of matching stimuli in the scene. However, the extent to which such top-down, memory-driven biasing of visual perception is contingent on conscious awareness remains unknown. Here we showed that conscious awareness of critical visual cues is dispensable for working memory to bias perceptual selection mechanisms. Using the procedure of continuous flash suppression, we demonstrated that “unseen” visual stimuli during interocular suppression can gain preferential access to awareness if they match the contents of visual working memory. Strikingly, the very same effect occurred even when the visual cue to be held in memory was rendered nonconscious by masking. Control experiments ruled out the alternative accounts of repetition priming and different detection criteria. We conclude that working memory biases of visual perception can operate in the absence of conscious awareness.