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Updated: Jan 27, 2026

Investigating the Neural Mechanisms of Aware and Unaware Fear Memory with fMRI
Published on: October 6, 2011
Perceptual organization of line configurations: Is visual awareness necessary?
Dina Devyatko1, Shahar Sabary2, Ruth Kimchi2
1Institute of Information Processing and Decision Making, University of Haifa, Israel.
Abstract:
We examined whether configuring, which determines the appearance of grouped elements as a global shape, requires visual awareness, using a priming paradigm and two invisibility-inducing methods, CFS and sandwich masking. The primes were organized into configurations based on closure, collinearity, and symmetry (collinear primes), or on closure and symmetry (noncollinear primes). The prime-target congruency could be in configuration or in elements. During CFS, no significant response-priming was observed for invisible primes. When masking induced invisibility, a significant configuration response-priming was found for collinear and noncollinear primes, visible and invisible, with larger magnitude for the former. An element response-priming of equal magnitude was evident for visible and invisible noncollinear primes. Our results suggest that configuring can be accomplished in the absence of visual awareness when stimuli are rendered invisible by sandwich masking, but it benefits from visual awareness. Our results also suggest sensitivity to the available grouping cues in unconscious processing.
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