It all comes back to you: from short-term memory to visual awareness

Abstract

Understanding how we can consciously experience the visual world is a complex issue with many unresolved questions. In the experimental chapters of this dissertation, I and my co-authors have shown that 1) eye dominance is a multifaceted phenomenon thus should be determined based on the specific aspect of eye dominance of interest. 2) The content of VWM regulates the priority of visual input along the conjunction level when the memoranda consist of multiple features from the same feature dimension. In contrast, when the features are from different dimensions, the regulation can happen along a single feature dimension and the dominant feature can suppress the less dominant one from regulating access to visual awareness. 3) VWM and saliency independently influence the priority of visual information for access to visual awareness. 4) saccades reset the priority of visual information to access visual awareness. Collectively, these results expand our understanding of visual awareness and provide clear evidence for further research in both short-term memory and visual awareness.