Disentangling perceptual awareness from nonconscious processing in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

ABSTRACT: Scholars have long debated whether animals, which display impressive intelligent behaviors, are consciously aware or not. Yet, because many complex human behaviors and high-level functions can be performed without conscious awareness, it was long considered impossible to untangle whether animals are aware or just conditionally or nonconsciously behaving. Here, we developed an empirical approach to address this question. We harnessed a well-established cross-over double dissociation between nonconscious and conscious processing, in which people perform in completely opposite ways when they are aware of stimuli versus when they are not. To date, no one has explored if similar performance dissociations exist in a nonhuman species. In a series of seven experiments, we first established these s

SUBMITTER: Ben-Haim MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8053918 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature