Amodal completion of unconsciously presented objects.

In the visual environment, objects often appear behind occluding surfaces, yet they are automatically and effortlessly perceived as complete. Here, we examined whether visually occluded objects that are presented below the threshold of awareness are amodally completed. We used a priming paradigm in which participants responded to consciously perceived targets that were preceded by unconsciously presented primes. In two experiments, we show that discrimination responses to targets were faster when they were preceded by congruent shapes, regardless of whether these shapes were intact and complete or occluded by a horizontal bar. This priming effect was not produced by a partial match in features, since the occluded primes did not facilitate responses to targets that shared local features (Experiment 1) or contained only the object features that remained visible after occlusion (Experiment 2). These results show that objects presented below the threshold of awareness can be amodally completed and provide compelling evidence that unconscious processing occurs to a greater extent than previously considered.