Early computation of valence: Garner interference between valence and hue in conscious perception of color

Barrett & Bar (2009) proposed that valence and other aspects of one’s affective response to stimuli could be processed in parallel with visual features such as color and shape, so making affect part of perception. Likewise, Panichello et al. (2017) suggested that affective information could facilitate the faster processing and understanding of visual scenes. Based on these and other findings, some authors suggested that conscious experience is inherently valenced (Barrett and Bar, 2009; Jacobson, 2021; Cleeremans & Tallon-Baudry, 2022). In this context, a central issue is whether valence computation is akin to a low-level visual property, or whether valence is computed post-perceptually. To address this issue, we adopted the Garner interference framework, as described in a recent study by Jacobson et al. (2024). In this framework, two perceptual dimensions, such as color and shape, are said to be separable if they can be processed independently from each other. In such cases it is easy to focus on one dimension while ignoring the other. By contrast, two dimensions are said to be integral if they are perceived in a unified way, as with hue and saturation (which are perceived together as a color). In such cases, focusing on one dimension while ignoring the other one requires effort. Here, participants took part in a Garner’s speeded classification task in which they had to indicate as quickly and as accurately as possible the valence (N=41) or the hue (N=40) of the presented smiley or frowny icon. In the Baseline blocks, the smileys varied only along the target dimension. In the Filtering blocks, both the valence and the hue randomly varied irrespective of the target dimension. We observed a typical Garner interference, with a facilitation in the Baseline compared to the Filtering condition for both groups, suggesting that valence and hue were perceived in a unified way. Our results are congruent with those of Jacobson et al. (2024), who have documented this kind of interference between valence and brightness. Taken together, both Jacobson’s results and ours support the idea that valence is computed early and infuses all conscious perception in such a way as to influence behavior.