The field of consciousness studies has yielded various-sometimes contradicting-accounts regarding the function of consciousness, ranging from denying it has such function to claiming that any high-level cognitive function requires consciousness. Empirical findings supporting both accounts were reported, yet some of them have been recently revisited based on failures to replicate. Here, we aimed at replicating a remarkable finding reported by Ric and Muller (2012); participants were able to follow an unseen instruction, integrate it with a subsequently presented pair of unseen digits, and accordingly either add the digits (resulting in a priming effect), or simply represent them. This finding thus demonstrates unconscious task-switching, temporal integration (involving mental chaining), and arithmetic operation. Finding such high-level processes in the absence of awareness is of pivotal importance to our understanding of consciousness, as it challenges prominent theories in the field (e.g., the global neuronal workspace). Accordingly, in light of the self-correction wave in psychological science in general and in the field of consciousness studies in particular, we report here a preregistered replication aimed at testing the reproducibility of this finding, while also better controlling for subjects' awareness of both the instruction and the digits. Across two highly powered experiments, our results failed to replicate the original effect. We, therefore, conclude that the current evidence does not support the claim that arithmetic operations (specifically, addition) can be flexibly initiated without awareness, in line with the current arguments for a more limited scope of unconscious processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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没有证据表明无意识地启动和遵循算术规则：一项重复研究。


意识研究领域已经产生了关于意识功能的各种——有时是相互矛盾的——的说法，从否认它具有这种功能到声称任何高级认知功能都需要意识。报告了支持这两种说法的实证发现，但最近由于复制失败，对其中一些结果进行了重新审视。在这里，我们旨在复制 Ric 和 Muller （2012） 报告的一项非凡发现;参与者能够遵循一个看不见的指令，将其与随后呈现的一对看不见的数字整合，并相应地添加数字（产生启动效果），或者简单地表示它们。因此，这一发现证明了无意识的任务切换、时间整合（涉及心理链接）和算术运算。在没有意识的情况下找到这种高级过程对于我们理解意识至关重要，因为它挑战了该领域的突出理论（例如，全局神经元工作空间）。因此，鉴于一般心理科学，特别是意识研究领域的自我纠正浪潮，我们在这里报告了一个预先注册的复制，旨在测试这一发现的可重复性，同时也更好地控制受试者对指令和数字的意识。在两个高功率实验中，我们的结果未能复制原始效应。因此，我们得出结论，目前的证据并不支持算术运算（特别是加法）可以在没有意识的情况下灵活启动的说法，这与目前关于更有限的无意识处理范围的论点一致。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。