Fragile memories for fleeting percepts
5 affiliations
- 1School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom; School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF, United Kingdom. Electronic address: [email protected]
- 2Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF, UK
- 3School of Computing, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
- 4School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom
- 5School of Psychology & Counselling, Open University, Walton Hall, Kents Hill, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Abstract
Our perceptual systems are exceptionally good at searching our sensory environments for salient stimuli. A key question is the extent to which this search is performed subliminally. Consistent with our tokenized-percept theory, we hypothesis that it is. We explore this using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), by comparing detection performance with the memory left for distractors, the stimuli that have to be rejected as non-targets in the process of searching for targets. In agreement with our hypothesis, our findings are that "immediate" free recall of arbitrary distractors at RSVP rates is very poor, with a severe recency effect. Recognition performance was higher and less subject to recency, but still substantially lower than detection performance. These findings suggest that the brain does indeed subliminally search for salient stimuli, providing evidence for the tokenized-percept hypothesis, which links conscious perception to the process of episodically marking experiences.
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BibTeX
@article{bowman2026fragile,
title = {{Fragile memories for fleeting percepts}},
author = {Howard Bowman and Alberto Avilés},
journal = {Consciousness and Cognition},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1016/j.concog.2026.104073},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2026.104073},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Fragile memories for fleeting percepts
AU - Howard Bowman
AU - Alberto Avilés
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/01
JO - Consciousness and Cognition
DO - 10.1016/j.concog.2026.104073
UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2026.104073
AB - Our perceptual systems are exceptionally good at searching our sensory environments for salient stimuli. A key question is the extent to which this search is performed subliminally. Consistent with our tokenized-percept theory, we hypothesis that it is. We explore this using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), by comparing detection performance with the memory left for distractors, the stimuli that have to be rejected as non-targets in the process of searching for targets. In agreement with our hypothesis, our findings are that "immediate" free recall of arbitrary distractors at RSVP rates is very poor, with a severe recency effect. Recognition performance was higher and less subject to recency, but still substantially lower than detection performance. These findings suggest that the brain does indeed subliminally search for salient stimuli, providing evidence for the tokenized-percept hypothesis, which links conscious perception to the process of episodically marking experiences.
SN - 1053-8100
SN - 1090-2376
ER -