Unconscious Prioritization for Reward Objects

One central question in Psychology and Neuroscience is regarding the scope of human consciousness. There is a lively debate as to whether the processing advantage of reward associations is necessarily dependent on consciousness. This study further examined this issue using reward objects with inherent reward attributes (e.g., money) as stimuli. Employing a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, Experiments 1-3 (n = 90) showed that high-denomination banknote got a privilege in breaking into awareness compared to low-denomination banknote. Experiments 4 and 5 (n = 60) demonstrated that the breakthrough difference could not be attributed to low-level factors. Experiments 6 and 7 (n = 58) elucidated the potential mechanism underlying unconscious reward advantage, indicating that reward level, rather than monetary value, is the critical determinant of this effect. These findings advance our understanding of the consciousness boundaries and highlight incentive salience as a key mechanism through which reward modulates unconscious visual processing.