RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Learning improves conscious access at the bottom, but not the top: Reverse hierarchical effects in perceptual learning and metacognition
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 073130
DO 10.1101/073130
A1 Benjamin Chen
A1 Matthew Mundy
A1 Naotsugu Tsuchiya
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/02/073130.abstract
AB Experience with visual stimuli can improve their perceptual performance, a phenomenon termed visual perceptual learning (VPL), but how does VPL shape our conscious experience of learned stimuli? VPL has been found to improve measures of metacognition, suggesting increased conscious stimulus accessibility. Such studies however, have largely failed to control objective task accuracy, which typically correlates with metacognition. Here, using a staircase method to control this confound, we investigated whether VPL improves the metacognitive accuracy of perceptual judgements. Across three consecutive days, subjects learned to discriminate faces based on either their identity or contrast. Holding objective accuracy constant, perceptual thresholds improved in both tasks, while metacognitive accuracy diverged, with face contrast VPL improving metacognition, and face identity VPL failing to. Our findings can be interpreted in a reverse hierarchy theory-like model of VPL, which counterintuitively predicts that the VPL of low- but not high-level stimulus properties should improve conscious stimulus accessibility.