P3b Does Not Reflect Perceived Contrasts

It has been shown that P3b is not a signature of perceptual awareness per se but is instead more closely associated with postperceptual processing (Cohen et al., 2020). Here, we seek to investigate whether human participants' attentional states are different in the report and the no-report conditions. This difference in attentional states, if exists, may lead to degraded consciousness of the stimuli in the no-report condition, and it therefore remains unknown whether the disappearance of P3b is because of a lack of reportability or degraded consciousness. Results of our experiment 1 showed that participants did experience degraded contents of consciousness in the no-report condition. However, results of experiment 2 showed that the degraded contents of consciousness did not influence the amplitude of P3b. These findings strengthen the claim that P3b is not a signature of perceptual awareness but is associated with postperceptual processing.

Automated summary

It has been shown that P3b is not a signature of perceptual awareness but is more associated with postperceptual processing. In this study, the researchers investigated whether attentional states of human participants are different in the report and no-report conditions. Results showed that participants did experience degraded consciousness in the no-report condition, but this degradation did not influence the amplitude of P3b. These findings support the claim that P3b is not a signature of perceptual awareness but is related to postperceptual processing.