Are we underestimating the richness of visual experience?

Neurosci Conscious. 2017 Feb 5;2017(1):niw023. doi: 10.1093/nc/niw023. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

It has been argued that the bandwidth of perceptual experience is low-that the richness of experience is illusory and that the amount of visual information observers can perceive and remember is extremely limited. However, the evidence suggests that this postulated poverty of experiential content is illusory and that visual phenomenology is immensely rich. To properly estimate perceptual content, experimentalists must move beyond the limitations of binary alternative-forced choice procedures and analyze reports of experience more broadly. This will open our eyes to the true richness of experience and to its neuronal substrates.

Keywords: contents of consciousness; psychophysics; visual perception.