We examined whether the perceptual organization of hierarchical structure, and specifically, the integration of local elements into a global shape, requires visual awareness, using a masked priming paradigm, sandwich masking to render the prime invisible, and two types of primes, many-element hierarchical patterns composed of many relatively small elements (Experiment 1) and few-element hierarchical patterns composed of a few relatively large elements (Experiment 2). A significant response priming of the local elements of many-element patterns was observed for invisible primes, whereas a significant response priming of the global shape was found only for the visible primes. For the few-element patterns, only significant response priming of the local elements was observed, as expected, for both visible and invisible primes. Our results suggest that local elements are represented in the absence of visual awareness, regardless of their number and relative size. Visual awareness, however, can be essential for grouping local elements into a global shape. The critical role of awareness in deriving global structure implies that global perception, which characterizes much of our early perception of objects and scenes, is likely to depend on visual awareness.

我们检查了层次结构的感官组织，特别是将局部元素集成为全局形状，是否需要视觉意识，使用蒙版的底漆范例，三明治式蒙版使素数不可见，以及两种类型的素数，多元素由许多相对较小的元素组成的分层模式（实验1）和由一些相对较大的元素组成的少数元素分层模式（实验2）。对于看不见的素数，观察到多元素模式局部元素的显着响应引发，而整体形状的显着响应引发仅发现对于可见的素数。对于少数元素模式，对于可见和不可见素数，仅观察到局部元素的显着响应引发。我们的结果表明，无论其数量和相对大小如何，在没有视觉意识的情况下都可以表示局部元素。但是，视觉意识对于将局部元素分组为整体形状至关重要。意识在推导全球结构中的关键作用意味着，全球感知是我们对物体和场景的早期感知的特征，很可能取决于视觉感知。