Anthony J. Marcel's experiments explore the relationship between masking and consciousness, as well as visual word processing. Five experiments are conducted to investigate how masking affects the detection and processing of words. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to make decisions about the presence of a word or blank field, and the similarity of a masked word to two probe words. As the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) decreased, subjects' performance on detection, graphic, and semantic decisions followed a specific order. In Experiment 2, subjects were unable to selectively choose based on graphic or semantic similarity when the stimuli were negatively correlated, suggesting that their choices were passively rather than intentionally mediated. In Experiment 3, color-congruent words facilitated reaction time (RT), while color-incongruent words delayed RT. Experiment 4 used a lexical decision task, where the effect of association was equal in unmasked and pattern masked cases but absent with energy masking. Experiment 5 showed that repeating a word-plus-mask increased the association effect on a subsequent lexical decision but had no effect on detectability or semantic relatedness of forced guesses. The findings challenge the assumption that perceptual representations are identical to and directly reflected by phenomenal percepts. The experiments suggest that perceptual processing is unconscious and automatically proceeds to all levels of analysis. The results indicate that central pattern masking has little effect on visual processing itself but affects the availability of processing results to consciousness. The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between conscious and nonconscious processes, and the role of automatic processing in visual perception. The findings have implications for understanding the nature of consciousness and the mechanisms of perception.Anthony J. Marcel's experiments explore the relationship between masking and consciousness, as well as visual word processing. Five experiments are conducted to investigate how masking affects the detection and processing of words. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to make decisions about the presence of a word or blank field, and the similarity of a masked word to two probe words. As the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) decreased, subjects' performance on detection, graphic, and semantic decisions followed a specific order. In Experiment 2, subjects were unable to selectively choose based on graphic or semantic similarity when the stimuli were negatively correlated, suggesting that their choices were passively rather than intentionally mediated. In Experiment 3, color-congruent words facilitated reaction time (RT), while color-incongruent words delayed RT. Experiment 4 used a lexical decision task, where the effect of association was equal in unmasked and pattern masked cases but absent with energy masking. Experiment 5 showed that repeating a word-plus-mask increased the association effect on a subsequent lexical decision but had no effect on detectability or semantic relatedness of forced guesses. The findings challenge the assumption that perceptual representations are identical to and directly reflected by phenomenal percepts. The experiments suggest that perceptual processing is unconscious and automatically proceeds to all levels of analysis. The results indicate that central pattern masking has little effect on visual processing itself but affects the availability of processing results to consciousness. The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between conscious and nonconscious processes, and the role of automatic processing in visual perception. The findings have implications for understanding the nature of consciousness and the mechanisms of perception.