Abstract: This study provides a different perspective on the concept of perceptual awareness by examining the possible trade-off effects of attention and stimulus duration through a character-exclusion task. In Experiment 1, the use of target characters in completing character radicals occurred more often than the baseline expectation when they were presented for a short time. The reverse was observed when increasing either the attention to or the duration of the target characters. Similarly, in Experiment 2, target characters were used to complete the radicals more often than the baseline under the divided-attention condition. The reverse was again observed when either under the focused-attention condition or when the divided-attention condition was combined with the long stimulus duration condition. These results suggest trade-offs between attention and stimulus quality in defining perceptual awareness.

Key words: exclusion task, awareness, attention, stimulus quality