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Learning improves conscious access at the bottom, but not the top: Reverse hierarchical effects in perceptual learning and metacognition

Benjamin Chen, Matthew Mundy, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/073130
Benjamin Chen
1School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Biomedical and Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Australia
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Matthew Mundy
1School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Biomedical and Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Australia
2Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Monash University, Australia
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Naotsugu Tsuchiya
1School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Biomedical and Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Australia
2Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Monash University, Australia
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Abstract

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.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted September 02, 2016.
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Learning improves conscious access at the bottom, but not the top: Reverse hierarchical effects in perceptual learning and metacognition
Benjamin Chen, Matthew Mundy, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
bioRxiv 073130; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/073130
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Learning improves conscious access at the bottom, but not the top: Reverse hierarchical effects in perceptual learning and metacognition
Benjamin Chen, Matthew Mundy, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
bioRxiv 073130; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/073130

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