Is conscious perception necessary to direct attention? A replication of Jiang et al. (2006): Stage 2 Registered Report

The relationship between attention and consciousness has been debated for decades. Observing attentional biases induced by visual stimuli below the conscious threshold is one way of providing evidence for the independence of attention and conscious perception. Among such studies, Jiang et al. (2006) found a strong priming effect below the objective conscious threshold with high sensitivity, in showing attentional biases to nude images suppressed by continuous flash suppression (CFS). In our replication, we found moderate Bayesian evidence for the unconscious attraction from opposite sex nude images below the subjective conscious threshold in heterosexual participants. This supports the theory that attention and consciousness are dissociable, and the idea that sexually attractive visual stimuli capture attention even when rendered unconscious. The results have been checked for computational reproducibility by an independent statistician, full report at https://osf.io/dr35v/files/te58h.