A powerful variant of flash suppression is continuous flash suppression, originally reported by Nao Tsuchiya and Christof Koch (2004) (See also Tsuchiya and Koch (2005) and Fang and He (2005)). Here a small, fixed image in the first eye—say a gray-scale fearful face—is completely suppressed by a stream of constantly changing images flashed into the second eye (say a series of colorful Mondrian-scenes replaced every 0.1 sec by a new Mondrian pattern). This suppression can last for minutes, a remarkable testament to the fact that humans often do not see what is directly in front of their eyes.
Continuous flash suppression is a useful method for psychologists and neuroscientists interested in studying the mechanisms of conscious and nonconscious visual processing. Whereas other visual illusions that render otherwise salient images invisible have their own shortcomings and advantages (Kim & Blake 2005), continuous flash suppression has a number of advantages for wiping images from conscious vision. It can erase an image presented at the fovea (which usually is much more resistant to perceptual suppression, unlike, for example, crowding), in every trial (unlike binocular rivalry), for a longer duration (>1 sec, unlike backward masking), with an excellent control of timing (unlike binocular rivalry). It has been widely exploited to tackle the scope and limits of unconscious processing (Lin & He, in press).
Read more about this topic: Flash Suppression
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