Abstract

The study of implicit perception — perception in the absence of awareness — has a long history. Decades of behavioural work have identified crucial theoretical and methodological issues that must be considered when evaluating claims of implicit perception. Neuroimaging methods provide an important new avenue for illuminating our understanding of perception both with and without awareness, but most imaging experiments have not met the rigorous conditions that the behavioural work has shown are necessary for inferring implicit perception. Here, we review the literature of both behavioural and neuroimaging studies, and note the pitfalls of studying implicit perception as well as the promise that neuroimaging studies have for providing insights about implicit perception when combined with appropriately rigorous behavioural measures of awareness.

Author affiliations

1. Deborah E. Hannula, Daniel J. Simons and Neal J. Cohen are all at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA.
2. Neal J. Cohen is also at Washington University, Department of Psychology, Skinker Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA.

Correspondence to: Deborah E. Hannula¹ Email: hannula@uiuc.edu

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.