Abstract: PURPOSE: Dynamic events with regular changing patterns provide abundant sources of temporal structures in our environment. In a previous study, we have demonstrated that feature- and semantics-based temporal structures, relative to their non-structured counterparts, prolonged the predominance of dynamic information streams during the competition for visual awareness. Here we disentangled the underlying mechanisms for these multi-source facilitation effects, especially regarding their reliance on conscious processing.
METHODS: Using the binocular rivalry paradigm, we assessed the conscious and unconscious advantages of structured streams, respectively, by measuring their dominance and suppression durations, as compared with their physically matched but non-structured counterparts, when rivaled against the same random streams. To confirm the observed effect during the unconscious phase, we further carried out a bCFS experiment, in which the time for structured and non-structured streams to break into awareness, when initially suppressed by continuous flash suppression, were directly compared.
RESULTS: During binocular rivalry, despite enjoying privileges over random structures to similar extents, temporal structures built on regular change of visual features held an advantage largely attributable to reduced durations when suppressed from awareness, whereas those emerging from semantic-level regularities benefited mainly from prolonged perceptual durations while being consciously perceived. Moreover, the bCFS experiment yielded consistent results that only the feature-based structured streams gained privileged access to awareness over the random counterparts, indicating a benefit derived from unconscious processing.
CONCLUSIONS: Together, these findings argue for dissociable mechanisms to prioritize different types of temporal regularities for conscious experience. Extraction and utilization of semantic-level temporal structures engage conscious information processing, whereas those of perceptual-level temporal structures could occur even without awareness, pointing to their distinct privileges and functional roles at conscious and unconscious levels.

Key words: temporal structure, visual awareness, binocular rivalry, unconscious processing