Investigating the validity of the Perceptual Awareness Scale – The effect of task-related difficulty on subjective rating

• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2021.103197
• Publication Date: 2021-08-29T20:48:35Z
• Authors: Zuzanna Skóra; Kinga Ciupińska; Simon Hviid Del Pin; Morten Overgaard; Michał Wierzchoń
• Keywords: Presentation (obstetrics); Response bias

The Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) is often used to probe conscious experience, but the assumptions behind scale and its validity are rarely tested. Using a continuous colour estimation task assess perceptual quality, we focus on how well PAS follows quality presence of affects ratings. We varied number presentation time stimuli in simultaneous target position sequential presentation. In all experiments, rating closely followed precision. However, it was affected by task-induced response bias, even when possible difficulty judged, without performing itself. Still, this bias only observed absolute level rather than scale's ability capture changes quality. Reported studies shed light factors influencing scales outside formulation construction.