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30 - Priming and retouch in flash-lag and other phenomena of the streaming perceptual input

from Part V - Space–time and awareness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2010

By
Talis Bachmann
Edited by
Romi Nijhawan  and
Beena Khurana
Romi Nijhawan
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Beena Khurana
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Summary

Summary

When rapidly successive objects or object replicas are presented as sensory streams, a stimulus within a stream is perceptually facilitated relative to an otherwise identical stimulus not within the stream. Experiments on perceptual latency priming and flash-lag have convincingly shown this. Unfortunately, no consensus exists on what is (are) the mechanism(s) responsible for in-stream facilitation. Here, I discuss several alternative explanations: perceptual extrapolation of change in the specific properties of continuous stimulation, time-saving for target processing due to the early microgenetic/formation stages for target being completed on pretarget in-stream items, control of focused selective attention by the onsets of stimulus input, and preparation of the nonspecific perceptual retouch by the preceding nontarget input in stream for the succeeding target input in stream. Revisions are outlined to overcome the explanatory difficulties that the retouch theory has encountered in the face of new phenomena of perceptual dissociation.

Introduction

Objects that do not occur in isolation are processed differently compared to when they appear as separate entities. If we compare the visual latency of an object presented alone with the latency of its replica that is presented after another object (which is presented nearby in space and time), we see that the object that comes after having been primed by other input achieves awareness faster (Neumann 1982; Bachmann 1989; Scharlau & Neumann 2003a & b; Scharlau 2004). In a typical experiment, a visual prime stimulus is presented, followed by another stimulus that acts as a backward mask to the prime.

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Space and Time in Perception and Action , pp. 536 - 558
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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