One way to understand a system is to explore how its behaviour degrades when it is overloaded. This approach can be applied to understanding conscious perception by presenting stimuli in rapid succession in the ‘same’ perceptual event/moment. In previous work, we have identified a striking dissociation during the perceptual moment, between what is encoded into working memory [Lag-1 sparing in the attentional blink (AB)] and what is consciously perceived (Lag-1 impairing in the experiential blink). This paper links this dissociation to what, taking inspiration from the metacognition literature, could be called meta-experience; i.e. how the ability to track and comment on one’s visual experience with subjectivity ratings reflects objective performance. Specifically, we provide evidence that the information (in bits) associated with an encoding into working memory decouples from the experiential reflection upon that perceptual/encoding event and that this decoupling is largest when there is the greatest perceptual overload. This is the meta-experiential blink. Meta-experiential self-observation is common to many computational models, including connectionist interpretations of consciousness, Bayesian observers and the readout-enhanced simultaneous type/serial token (reSTST) model. We assess how our meta-experiential blink data could be modelled using the concept of self-observation, providing model fits to behavioural and electroencephalogram responses in the reSTST model. We discuss the implications of our computational modelling of parallel encoding but serial experience for theories of conscious perception. Specifically, we (i) inform theories of Lag-1 sparing during the AB and (ii) consider the implications for the global workspace theory of conscious perception and higher-order theories of consciousness.

中文翻译：

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建模感知时刻的同时编码/串行体验理论：元体验的一瞬间

理解系统的一种方法是探索其行为在过载时如何退化。这种方法可以通过在“相同的”感知事件/时刻快速连续地呈现刺激来理解有意识的感知。在之前的工作中，我们已经发现在感知时刻，编码到工作记忆中的内容[注意眨眼 (AB) 中的 Lag-1 保留] 和有意识感知的内容（经验性眨眼中的 Lag-1 受损）之间存在显着的分离。 . 本文将这种分离与从元认知文献中获得灵感的东西联系起来，可以称为元体验。即通过主观评级跟踪和评论一个人的视觉体验的能力如何反映客观表现。具体来说，我们提供的证据表明，与编码到工作记忆相关的信息（以比特为单位）与对该感知/编码事件的经验反射脱钩，并且当存在最大的感知过载时，这种脱钩最大。这是元体验眨眼。元经验自我观察在许多计算模型中都很常见，包括意识的连接主义解释、贝叶斯观察者和读出增强的同时类型/串行令牌 (reSTST) 模型。我们评估了如何使用自我观察的概念对我们的元经验眨眼数据进行建模，从而为 reSTST 模型中的行为和脑电图反应提供模型拟合。我们讨论了并行编码但串行经验的计算模型对意识感知理论的影响。