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Summary

The article “Retrospective Attention Can Trigger Visual Perception Without Dependence on Either Cue Awareness or Target Reporting” by Li et al 2024 examined visual consciousness through the usage of retrospective attention experimentation. The overall goal was elucidating retrospective attention effects as an attention or sensory based mechanism, whether it persists in an unconscious paradigm, and characterizing its associated neural activity. 

Strengths

• Introduction

  • Introduces research topics very well by using some existing studies to build upon their credibility. 

  • Makes strong connections with existing theories, such as the Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT). 

  • Establishes the research gap being studied and its context.

•  Results

  • Data is anonymized and available. 

  • This section highlights both significant and non-significant outcomes, which improves the transparency of the paper.

  • Figures are well made and labeled.

• Discussion

  • The discussion is well-rounded, tying back to the concepts mentioned in the introduction and addressing limitations.

• Methodology

  • The control conditions such as visible and invisible cues with some manipulation help the study make comparisons of conscious vs. unconscious cue processing and validating the results.

  • The 2AFC staircase method helps adjust the task to the participants ability making the difficulty fair for all conditions.

  • Threshold tests were implemented before the main task which helped ensure that each of the participants' performances were measured which reduced variability.

  • Sessions were counterbalanced to reduce order effects. 

Suggestions/Improvements

• Introduction and Discussion

  • Although this may be intentional, the paper seems to be written for an expert audience because of its extensive usage of technical terms. Providing context or definitions of vocabulary would serve a wider audience. 

  • The introduction and discussion could benefit from well-elaborated real world examples connected to the data. 

  • Discussion lacks clarity on key takeaways and has unnecessary repetition, like when talking about how retroactive attention boosts conscious perception.

• Methodology and Results

  • The results section heavily summarizes information already available from the figures. It would be beneficial to instead emphasize the main takeaway. Having a better and clearer narrative over the trends would make the results easier to interpret. 

  • Error bars in the figures are often covered in data points. They should be visually enhanced for clarity. 

  • All the participants fall into the range of 18-29 years old which could make the results less applicable to people from other age groups.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.