Investigating the Phenomenality of Consciousness in Iconic Memory Using Stroop Modified Paradigm

Background and Aim : Phenomenal consciousness is the unique, private, and first-person mental qualitative experience that cannot be verbally described and reported. Access consciousness is the accessibility of phenomenal consciousness for cognitive systems. One of the components of access consciousness is attention. It is said if we want to become conscious of something, we should already pay attention to it meaning that attention is necessary for consciousness. But if there is a situation in which consciousness happens without attention, the nature of that consciousness will be phenomenal. Iconic memory, which is the most transitory type of memory, has been investigated in the discussion of the necessity of attention for consciousness. In iconic memory tasks subjects have to report the cued items in the partial report condition and report all the items in the whole report condition. Results have shown that subjects report less than half items in the whole report but report nearly all the cued items. Based on this, some have claimed we see more than we can report and although all the items in iconic memory are not reportable at once, all of them are phenomenally and consciously represented. But others argue that first the items are unconsciously represented and then the attended parts will become consciously access. Using iconic memory dual tasks in which attention is locally diverted to peripheral task in order to examine phenomenality of consciousness in the central task in the previous studies has caused the problem of expectation and previous knowledge in perception of the stimuli. Regarding the methodological shortcomings of examining the two opposing views in studying the phenomenality of consciousness in iconic memory, the purpose of the present study was to suggest and use Stroop s modified paradigm to study consciousness in iconic memory as in Stroop paradigm there are two processing properties of word and color and it would not need to divert attention locally as in dual tasks.Methods : Thirty subjects were voluntarily selected and randomly assigned to partial and whole report groups. They performed the iconic memory task in two congruent and incongruent conditions. After the modified Stroop test was performed, the data were analyzed by T-dependent and covariance analysis.Results : A) in the partial report group, participants had more correct responses and less reaction time in responses consequently, better performance compared to whole report group both in congruent and incongruent conditions. B) attentional bias to word processing in incongruent condition did not decrease the processing speed in responses compared to congruent condition both in the partial and whole report groups.Conclusion : Consciousness in iconic memory is phenomenal and does not require attention.

کلیدواژه ها:

Phenomenal Consciousness ، Access Consciousness ، Attention ، Iconic Memory ، Stroop Paradigm