Qualia structures collapse for geometric shapes, but not faces, when spatial attention is withdrawn

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/x3pcn_v2
• Publication Date: 2025-04-06T23:39:53Z
• Authors: Elise Rowe; Ken Takeda; Masafumi Oizumi; Joanita D'Souza; Jeroen van Boxtel; Naotsugu Tsuchiya
• Keywords: Qualia

The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such poorly characterise the quality experience, or qualia, for short. To attentional we combined a dual-task paradigm with similarity rating to examine whether relational structures qualia are altered by amplification. Under same physical input, withdrawing collapsed letters (N=14) and red/green bisected disks (N=14), but not faces (N=13), as quantified via an unsupervised optimal transport alignment technique. Alignment accuracy was high face obtained under fully versus attended conditions disks. Our approach that combines ratings, perturbation is powerful new elucidate structural properties consciousness.