The Influence Of Unconscious Perception On Visual Working Memory

Beings are not necessarily visible,invisible are not necessarily present.Although the depth of unconscious processing is still controversial,a large number of researchers believe that we can perform unconscious perception processing.But there is few research on the intensity and stability of this unconscious perception processing,and weather this processing can affect the representations that already exist in our consciousness?Using subliminal orientations as distracters,we conducted three experiments to explore the influence of unconscious distracter during the maintenance phase of a visual working memory task.In experiment 1,we studied the interfering effects of a subliminal orientation during maintenance of visual working memory,and whether the similarity between memory item and distracter can reduce this impair effect.In experiment 2,we studied whether the subliminal orientation can reduce the representation fidelity of visual working memory,and whether the similarity between memory item and distracter can reduce this impair effect.In experiment 3,we studied whether the task-irrelevant subliminal information can impair the representation of visual working memory.In experiment 4,we test whether the impaired effect would generalize to color stimuli.In general,the conclusions are as follows.1.Unconscious distracter impair visual working memory,similarity between distracter and memory items can not modify this impair effect.2.Unconscious distracter does not impair visual working memory representation fidelity.3.The interference effect of distracter on visual working memory only limited in the same category within memory item and distracter.Providing a new basis for resource sharing interpretations.