Here, we explore the sensitivity of different awareness scales in revealing conscious reports on visual emotion perception. Participants were exposed to a backward masking task involving fearful faces and asked to rate their conscious awareness in perceiving emotion in facial expression using three different subjective measures: confidence ratings , with the conventional taxonomy of certainty, the perceptual awareness scale , through which participants categorize “raw” visual experience, and post-decision wagering , which involves economic categorization. Our results show that the CR (...) measure was the most exhaustive and the most graded. In contrast, the PAS and PDW measures suggested instead that consciousness of emotional stimuli is dichotomous. Possible explanations of the inconsistency were discussed. Finally, our results also indicate that PDW biases awareness ratings by enhancing first-order accuracy of emotion perception. This effect was possibly a result of higher motivation induced by monetary incentives. (shrink)

Post-decision wagering has been proposed as a method of demonstrating that perception can occur without conscious awareness. When wagering is independent from above-chance performance there is evidence of a lack of awareness of the correctness of the first-order discriminations. However, there are reasons to believe that the contingency analysis conducted by Persaud and colleagues failed to measure “the zero accuracy-wagering criterion”. The author shows that a Pearson chi-square test employed by Persaud and colleagues is unable to accommodate the hypothesis of (...) partial independence between accuracy and advantageous wagering. On the contrary, the problem of “the zero accuracy-wagering criterion” is best conducted with log-linear models. Moreover, log-linear analysis suggests that absence of advantageous wagering is not sufficient evidence for a lack of conscious awareness. In the case of the blindsight study, there was compelling evidence that the patient GY was partially aware of having information about the correctness of his decisions. (shrink)

Conscious access to fear-relevant information is mediated by threshold The present report proposed a model of access consciousness to fear-relevant information according to which there is a threshold for emotional perception beyond that the subject makes hits with no false alarm. The model was examined by having the participants performed a confidence-ratings masking task with fearful faces. Measures of the thresholds for conscious access were taken by looking at the receiver operating characteristics curves generated from a three-state low- and high-threshold (...) model by Krantz. Indeed, the analysis of the masking data revealed that the ROCs had threshold-like-nature rather continuous challenging in this fashion the classical signal-detection view on perceptual processing. Moreover, the threshold ROC curve exhibited the specific y-intercepts relevant to conscious access performance. The study suggests that the threshold can be an intrinsic property of conscious access, mediating emotional contents between perceptual states and consciousness. (shrink)

The present report examined the hypothesis that two distinct visual routes contribute in processing low and high spatial frequencies of fearful facial expressions. Having the participants presented with a backwardly masked task, we analyzed conscious processing of spatial frequency contents of emotional faces according to both objective and subjective taskrelevant criteria. It was shown that fear perception in the presence of the low-frequency faces can be supported by stronger automaticity leading to less false positives. In contrary, the detection of high-frequency (...) fearful faces was more likely supported by conscious awareness leading to more true positives. (shrink)

The present study provides evidence that the activation strength produced by emotional stimuli must pass a threshold level in order to be consciously perceived, contrary to the assumption of continuous quality of representation. An analysis of receiver operating characteristics for attentional blink performance was used to distinguish between two models of emotion perception by inspecting two different ROC’s shapes. Across all conditions, the results showed that performance in the attentional blink task was better described by the two-limbs ROC predicted by (...) the Krantz threshold model than by the curvilinear ROC implied by the signal-detection theory. (shrink)

Despite advances in the treatment of heart failure, the physical symptoms and stress of the disease continue to negatively impact patients’ health outcomes. Technology now offers promising ways to integrate personalized support from health care professionals via a variety of platforms. Digital health technology solutions using mobile devices or those that allow remote patient monitoring are potentially more cost effective and may replace in-person interaction. Notably, digital health methods may not only improve clinical outcomes but may also improve the psycho-social (...) status of HF patients. Using digital health to address biopsychosocial variables, including elements of the person and their context is valuable when considering chronic illness and HF in particular, given the multiple, cross-level factors affecting chronic illness clinical management needed for HF self-care. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Tadeusz Ślipko’s considerations concerning “the origins of human being” or, in other words, his theory of animation. One of the characteristic features of Ślipko’s Thomistic anthropology is an experimental orientation: i.e. using and referring to the data of the sciences as these relate to material, physical and biological reality. As the starting point of his position he adopts the concept of man: being composed of a material substrate, determined in his human form by the (...) immortal soul as the vital principle of his/her existence. In line with this orientation, Ślipko focuses his investigations around the idea of man conceived “as a personal being and the subject of morality as a whole, constituted in what determines his/her proper humanity.” Therefore, asking about the origins—so to say—the initial moment of human substance, Ślipko examines this issue in the context of philosophical assumptions about God as the Creator of the universe, and about man as a self-aware and self-acting being who is the cause of a series of effects. (shrink)

This article is a discussion of Tadeusz Ślipko’s considerations concerning “the origins of human being” or, in other words, his theory of animation. One of the characteristic features of Ślipko’s Thomistic anthropology is an experimental orientation: i.e. using and referring to the data of the sciences as these relate to material, physical and biological reality. As the starting point of his position he adopts the concept of man: being composed of a material substrate, determined in his human form by the (...) immortal soul as the vital principle of his/her existence. In line with this orientation, Ślipko focuses his investigations around the idea of man conceived “as a personal being and the subject of morality as a whole, constituted in what determines his/her proper humanity.” Therefore, asking about the origins—so to say—the initial moment of human substance, Ślipko examines this issue in the context of philosophical assumptions about God as the Creator of the universe, and about man as a self-aware and self-acting being who is the cause of a series of effects. (shrink)

In any theory satisfying the no-signaling principle correlations generated among spatially separated parties in a Bell-type experiment are subject to certain constraints known as monogamy relations. Recently, in the context of the black hole information loss problem it was suggested that these monogamy relations might be violated. This in turn implies that correlations arising in such a scenario must violate the no-signaling principle and hence can be used to send classical information between parties. Here, we study the amount of information (...) that can be sent using such correlations. To this aim, we first provide a framework associating them with classical channels whose capacities are then used to quantify the usefulness of these correlations in sending information. Finally, we determine the minimal amount of information that can be sent using signaling correlations violating the monogamy relation associated to the chained Bell inequalities. (shrink)

Comparison of behavioural measures of consciousness has attracted much attention recently. In a recent article, Szczepanowski et al. conclude that confidence ratings predict accuracy better than both the perceptual awareness scale and post-decision wagering when using stimuli with emotional content . Although we find the study interesting, we disagree with the conclusion that CR is superior to PAS because of two methodological issues. First, the conclusion is not based on a formal test. We performed this test and found no (...) evidence that CR predicted accuracy better than PAS . Second, Szczepanowski et al. used the present version of PAS in a manner somewhat different from how it was originally intended, and the participants may not have been adequately instructed. We end our commentary with a set of recommendations for future studies using PAS. (shrink)

The paper revises the biographical data about Michel Foucault’s stay in Poland in 1958-1959. The main inspiration comes from the recent very well documented literary reportage book by Remigiusz Ryziński, Foucault in Warsaw. Ryziński’s aim is to present the data and tell the story, not to analyse the data within the context of Foucault’s work. This paper fulfills this demand by giving additional hypotheses as to why Polish authorities expelled Foucault from Poland and what the relation was between communism (...) and homosexuality. The Polish experience, the paper compels, might have been inspiring for many of Foucault’s ideas in his Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. On the other hand the author points to the fact that Foucault recognized the difference between the role of the intellectual in the West and in communist countries but did not elaborate on it. In this paper the main argument deals with the idea of sexual paranoia as decisive, which is missing in Foucault's works, although it is found in e.g. Guy Hocquenghem. (shrink)

The paper revises the biographical data about Michel Foucault’s stay in Poland in 1958-1959. The main inspiration comes from the recent very well documented literary reportage book by Remigiusz Ryziński, Foucault in Warsaw. Ryziński’s aim is to present the data and tell the story, not to analyse the data within the context of Foucault’s work. This paper fulfills this demand by giving additional hypotheses as to why Polish authorities expelled Foucault from Poland and what the relation was between communism (...) and homosexuality. The Polish experience, the paper compels, might have been inspiring for many of Foucault’s ideas in his Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality. On the other hand the author points to the fact that Foucault recognized the difference between the role of the intellectual in the West and in communist countries but did not elaborate on it. In this paper the main argument deals with the idea of sexual paranoia as decisive, which is missing in Foucault's works, although it is found in e.g. Guy Hocquenghem. (shrink)