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Behavioral methods
in consciousness research
Behavioral methods
in consciousness
research
Edited by

Morten Overgaard

1
1
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 Contents
Contributors vii

Part 1 Introduction
1 Consciousness research methods: the empirical “hard problem” 3
Morten Overgaard
2 The challenge of measuring consciousness 7
Morten Overgaard
3 How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods 21
Bert Timmermans and Axel Cleeremans

Part 2 Experimental paradigms

4 Unmasking the pitfalls of the masking method in consciousness research 49
Talis Bachmann
5 A behavioral method to manipulate metacognitive awareness independent
of stimulus awareness 77
Amanda Song, Ai Koizumi, and Hakwan C. Lau
6 Inferences about consciousness using subjective reports of confidence 87
Maxine T. Sherman, Adam B. Barrett, and Ryota Kanai
7 Direct and indirect measures of statistical learning 107
Arnaud Destrebecqz, Ana Franco, Julie Bertels, and Vinciane Gaillard
8 Binocular rivalry and other forms of visual bistability 121
Jan Brascamp

Part 3 Measures of consciousness

9 Intentional binding: a measure of agency 145
Mads Jensen, Steven Di Costa, and Patrick Haggard
10 Measuring consciousness with confidence ratings 159
Elisabeth Norman and Mark C. Price
11 Using the perceptual awareness scale (PAS) 181
Kristian Sandberg and Morten Overgaard
vi CONTENTS

Part 4 Analysis and statistics

12 How Bayesian statistics are needed to determine whether mental
states are unconscious 199
Zoltan Dienes
13 Handling the p—and how real evidence goes beyond p-values 221
Kim Mouridsen

Part 5 Metachapter
14 Variability, convergence, and dimensions of consciousness 249
Colin Klein and Jakob Hohwy

Index 265
 Contributors

Professor Talis Bachmann Associate Professor Arnaud

University of Tartu, Destrebecqz
Näituse 20 Consciousness, Cognition
50409 Tartu, Estonia and Computation Group (CO3)
Dr Adam B. Barrett Center for Research in Cognition
Sackler Centre for Consciousness & Neurosciences (CRCN)
Science and Department of Informatics, ULB Institute of Neurosciences (UNI)
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK Université Libre de Bruxelles
50 av. Franklin Roosevelt CP 191
Dr Julie Bertels
1050 Brussels, Belgium
Consciousness, Cognition and
Computation Group (CO3) Professor Zoltan Dienes
Center for Research in Cognition Sackler Centre for Consciousness
& Neurosciences (CRCN) Science and School of
ULB Institute of Neurosciences (UNI) Psychology,
Université Libre de Bruxelles University of Sussex,
50 av. Franklin Roosevelt CP 191 Falmer, UK
1050 Brussels, Belgium Mr Steven Di Costa
Dr Jan Brascamp Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience,
Utrecht University, University College London
Willem C. Van Unnikgebouw, Alexandra House,
Heidelberglaan 2, Room 16.22, 17 Queen Square,
Utrecht, The Netherlands London, UK
Professor Axel Cleeremans Dr Ana Franco
Consciousness, Cognition Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences
and Computation Group (CO3) Cognitives (Unescog)
Center for Research in Cognition Center for Research in Cognition
& Neurosciences (CRCN) & Neurosciences (CRCN)
ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI) ULB Institute of Neurosciences (UNI)
Université Libre de Bruxelles Université Libre de Bruxelles
50 av. Franklin Roosevelt CP 191 50 av. Franklin Roosevelt CP 191
1050 Brussels, Belgium 1050 Brussels, Belgium
viii CONTRIBUTORS

Dr Vinciane Gaillard Dr Ai Koizumi

Consciousness, Cognition Psychology Department,
and Computation Group (CO3) Colombia University,
Center for Research in Cognition 1190 Amsterdam Avenue,
& Neurosciences (CRCN) New York, USA
ULB Institute of Neurosciences (UNI) University of Tokyo,
Université Libre de Bruxelles Tokyo, Japan
50 av. Franklin Roosevelt CP 191
1050 Brussels, Belgium Professor Hakwan C. Lau
Psychology Department,
Professor Patrick Haggard UCLA
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11620 Mayfield Avenue,
University College London Los Angeles, USA
Alexandra House,
17 Queen Square, Associate Professor Kim Mouridsen
London, UK Department of Clinical Medicine,
Center for Functionally Integrative
Professor Jakob Hohwy Neuroscience,
Cognition & Philosophy Lab, Nørrebrogade 44 NBG/10G,
Monash University, Room 10G-5-36,
Melbourne, Australia Aarhus, Denmark
Mads Jensen Associate Professor Elisabeth Norman
Cognitive Neuroscience Research Faculty of Psychology,
Unit (CNRU) CFIN, MindLab University of Bergen,
Dept. of Clinical Medicine Christies gate 12,
Aarhus University 5015 Bergen,
Aarhus, Denmark Norway
Dr Ryota Kanai Professor Morten Overgaard
Sackler Centre for Consciousness Cognitive Neuroscience Research
Science and School of Psychology, Unit (CNRU) CFIN, MindLab
University of Sussex, Dept. of Clinical Medicine
Brighton, UK Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark
Dr Colin Klein
Department of Philosophy, Dept. of Communication and Psychology
Macquarie University, Aalborg University
Sydney, Australia Aalborg, Denmark
 CONTRIBUTORS ix

Associate Professor Mark C. Price Amanda Song

Faculty of Psychology, Cognitive Science Department,
University of Bergen, University of California, San Diego, US
Christies gate 12, Assistant Professor Bert Timmermans
5015 Bergen, School of Psychology,
Norway University of Aberdeen,
Dr Kristian Sandberg William Guild Building,
Cognitive Neuroscience Research Unit King’s College,
(CNRU), Hammel Neurorehabilitation Aberdeen, UK
Centre and University Research Clinic
Aarhus University
Aarhus, Denmark
Maxine T. Sherman
Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
and School of Psychology,
University of Sussex,
Brighton, UK
 3.0

2.5

Treatment
Rating

No drug
2.0 Drug

1.5

No drug Drug
Treatment
Plate 1 Average rating data (perceptual awareness scale) in the word presentation experiment
with and without administration of a dopamine agonist. (See Fig. 13.1)

3.0

2.5

Treatment
Rating

No drug
2.0 Drug

1.5

No drug Drug
Treatment
Plate 2 Data from Plate 1 with lines indicating that the same subjects were observed in the two
groups. Compared to Plate 1 we see a clearer trend towards higher ratings with the dopamine
agonist. (See Fig. 13.2)
 Awareness ratings
1 2 3 4
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
5 6 7 8
3.0
2.5 Treatment
Rating

2.0 Drug
1.5 No drug
1.0
9 10 11 12
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0

20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50
PT
Plate 3 Average PAS ratings at three different stimulus durations for each subject with and
without the dopamine agonist. (See Fig. 13.3)

Fixed ef fects f it
1 2 3 4
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
5 6 7 8
3.0
2.5 Treatment
Rating

2.0 Drug
1.5 No drug
1.0
9 10 11 12
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0

20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50
PT
Plate 4 Fixed effects analysis suggests an increase in PAS rating with dopamine agonist, but
the model provides a poor fit in most subjects. It estimates the same effect across all subjects.
(See Fig. 13.4)
 1 2 3 4
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
5 6 7 8
3.5
3.0 Treatment
Rating

2.5 Drug
2.0
No drug
1.5
1.0
9 10 11 12
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50 20 30 40 50
PT
Plate 5 The random effects or mixed model produces an individual fit to each subject and
provides a more accurate fit to the individuals than the fixed effects model. Note that this comes
at the cost of only one additional parameter in the model (the variance component corresponding
to subject variation). (See Fig. 13.5)
 Incorrectly rejected hypotheses

0.75
Prior
Percentage 50%
0.50 70%
90%

0.25

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

p-value
Plate 6 Fraction of incorrectly rejected null hypotheses when the prior probability that the null is
true is 50, 70, or 90%. The dashed vertical line illustrates the fraction of incorrect rejections that
occurs if the alpha level is fixed at the typical 5%. (See Fig. 13.6)

Hypothesis Reject Conclusion

H0 X
H 0
0 0
–d d –d d
Trivial effects Non-trivial Non-trivial
effects effects
Plate 7 By extending the usual null hypothesis of zero effect to the hypothesis that the effect
is numerically less than d we avoid declaring the significance when magnitude of the effect
is scientifically negligible but p-value for the point null hypothesis nevertheless is below 5%.
(See Fig. 13.7)
 Risk of false rejection

0.100

0.075
Smallest relevant
difference (d)
d=0
Risk

0.050 d = 0.05
d = 0.10
d = 0.20
0.025

0.000

0 100 200 300 400 500

Number of subjects per group
Plate 8 Risk of falsely rejecting different null hypotheses in a simulated experiment with zero
effect. The usual point null is rejected in just under 10% of cases, which is about double the
alpha-level (5%), demonstrating that the risk of a false positive is not the usual 5% when
the researcher has the possibility to choose between two outcomes (and does not correct for
multiple comparisons). Testing the presence of non-zero effects leads to lower risks (however, the
appropriate strategy is to correct p-values for multiple comparisons). (See Fig. 13.8)

Hypothesis Reject Conclusion

H0 H0 X
H 0 X
H 0
0 0
–d d –d d
Non- Non- Equivalence
equivalence equivalence
Plate 9 Equivalence tests assume that an effect is numerically larger than some d, then rejects this
assumption if p-value is low. Hence equivalence can be concluded and the risk of a false rejection
is bounded by the alpha-level (which may be the usual 5%). (See Fig. 13.9)
 N = 20 N = 50
0

–10
OR
30
–20
20
log10(p)

–30 10
N = 100 N = 200
0
p > 0.05
–10 False
True

–20

–30
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
AUC
Plate 10 Each subplot shows (logarithm of the) p-value for different OR. When the number of
subjects is low, i.e. N = 20, p-values are generally high, but they decrease markedly—for the same
OR—as the number of subjects increases; see, for example, N = 200 in the lower right corner.
Note also that rather high OR are necessary to produce even moderate AUCs. (See Fig. 13.10)

Plate 11 Acute ischemic stroke patient with a small periventricular non-reversible lesion showing
on DWI and a larger area of reduced blood supply (perfusion) as seen on the MTT image. The final
lesion for this patient is shown on the fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) image to the
right. (See Fig. 13.11)
 Data, N = 20 observations per group Data, N = 125 observations per group Data, N = 250 observations per group
4 4 4

3 3 3

2 Group 2 Group 2 Group

A A A
x2

x2

x2
B B B
1 1 1

0 0 0

–1 –1 –1
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
x1 x1 x1
t-tests vs GLM
100

75

Test
Rejections (%)

t-test x1
t-test x2
GLM x1
50 GLM x2
GLM x1 × x2
Hotelling’s T2

25

0 50 100 150 200 250

Number of observations per group
Plate 12 In these data, where there is an interaction between two variables, univariate screening
is inefficient in identifying important effects, which are readily picked up by logistic regression.
GLM General linear model. (See Fig. 13.12)
 Screening vs GLM

100

80

Type
AUC (%)

Logistic Regression (GLM) x1 × x2

60 Univariate screening, x1
Univariate screening, x2

40

0 50 100 150 200 250

Number of observations per group
Plate 13 As effected, the predictive performance of logistic regression with interaction effects
far exceeds univariate screening when variables are not independent; see also Plate 12.
(See Fig. 13.13)
Part 1

Introduction
 Chapter 1

Consciousness research methods:

the empirical “hard problem”
Morten Overgaard

The idea for Behavioral methods in consciousness research was born in 2012. I had organ-
ized a symposium entitled “Behavioral methods to assess awareness” with Axel Cleere-
mans, Bert Timmermans, and Ryan Scott at the 16th Meeting of the Association for the
Scientific Study of Consciousness in Brighton. Given its somewhat technical nature, I had
expected nothing more than a modest number of participants. However, the opposite
turned out to be the case. The interest in methodology was impressive, but so was a very
understandable confusion amongst all the participants. While consciousness research has
resulted in an incredible amount of often very inventive experimental paradigms and re-
porting techniques, there seems to be no good way of deciding what constitutes an optimal
measure of consciousness. In fact, we even lack good ideas for how to determine if one
measure is better than another.
This book is intended to take steps towards improving this situation and achieving some
level of clarity about methodological issues in consciousness research. The first step is ar-
guably to identify problems related to measuring subjective experience and to figure out
which primary issues need to be confronted. The next step might be attempting to get an
overview of existing and possible solutions to these issues, their advantages and disadvan-
tages. From this, one might be able to assess the current state of methods in consciousness
research and potential future directions.
Throughout the development of its chapters, Behavioral methods in consciousness re-
search realizes that strategy. The general principle has been to openly assess strengths and
weaknesses for all methods, and to discuss problematic issues otherwise rarely mentioned
in scientific journal articles: What are the problems with particular methods? When do
they work and when do they not? What is actually being measured and how is a chosen
method contaminated by various confounding factors? Hopefully, by confronting such
questions that might seem challenging and perhaps even at times frustrating, this book
will work as a background or introduction to people interested in consciousness research,
regardless of whether they are moving into the field or whether they are already there. It
will also be a guide to making mature decisions about methodological choices and inter-
pretations of results, or even a manual in a classical sense.
4 Consciousness research methods: the empirical “hard problem”

Hard problems—in philosophy and in science

David Chalmers named the problem of understanding subjective experience the “hard
problem” (Chalmers 1995, 1996). This “hard problem” exists in philosophy and it con-
cerns the impossibility of explaining subjective experience from physical matter. For in-
stance, even if one day we had all knowledge of all physical matter, Chalmers argues that
we would still not be able to derive an understanding of what subjective experience is like
from this information alone. Using Thomas Nagel’s famous example, even if we had a com-
plete knowledge of bat brains, we would never understand what it is like for the bat to have
a sonar sense (Nagel 1974).
It could be argued that empirical science has a quite similar, and possibly even more
fundamental, hard problem of consciousness. Here it concerns the complete inability to
directly observe subjective states in others. The problem is different from the “explanatory
hard problem,” because it does not concern how we might understand the relationship
between consciousness and physical processes, but focuses on observation alone. All be-
havior and brain processes can be observed in the same way by all, in a “third-person
way,” while subjective experiences can only be observed by a subject having them, in a
“first-­person way.” As a consequence, there cannot be an external method to evaluate the
effectiveness or sensitivity of various proposed measures of consciousness. The problem
shares the “property of being hard” with the explanatory hard problem, as there seems to
be no kind of knowledge or technique, we can develop, which would turn “first-person
observation” into “third-person observation.” The limitations to observation are a matter
of principle.

Why should we measure consciousness?

One might very reasonably ask why one should care so much about these issues? Although
such problems as how we might ever understand the mind and its relation to the brain may
seem fascinating, they are also rather academic. One may even be tempted to speculate
that it was with good reason that questions about consciousness were put aside and rarely
debated in psychology and neuroscience until two decades ago.
But whatever we might think of it, conscious experience is an integral and fundamental
aspect of at least human psychology, probably extending to all, or most, animals. Conse-
quently, any theory of the mind or the brain that finds consciousness to be a mystery must
be either wrong or incomplete. An increasing amount of resources is spent on neurosci-
ence to create complete, all-encompassing computational and anatomical models of the
brain. The models aid more advanced methods of studying the physical and functional
processes of the brain. If, however, the methodology of studying consciousness remains in
its current state of confusion, we will be without the necessary empirical means to achieve
a complete understanding of the brain.
Measures of consciousness may also serve important clinical functions. The currently
unknown relation between behavior and subjective experience makes it difficult or im-
possible to evaluate if and how consciousness may be different in people with psychiatric
 The structure of this book 5

disorders and/or with brain injury. Particular problems of course relate to those subjects
whose brain injuries leave them in a comatose or vegetative state, and thus unable to com-
municate. It is, obviously, of incredible importance to understand whether such patients
have conscious experience, and, if so, what the nature of those experiences might be.
Most aspects of neuroscience are preoccupied with how one might relate structure to
function. If it could be shown that consciousness relates to structure in a 1:1 fashion—
that for each particular neural structure or network there would be one particular kind of
conscious content—philosophical theories claiming that consciousness is identical to or
reducible to the brain would be in agreement with empirical observations. However, if it
could be shown that the same conscious experience could relate to different structures, all
such theories would be false. Accordingly, patients who suffer an injury to the brain and
lose the ability to have particular conscious contents would as a matter of principle not be
able to recover the exact same experiences under the conditions of 1:1 relations between
brain and consciousness. Obviously, nothing would in principle prevent that possibility in
the opposite scenario.
In psychology, a lack of clarity about how to measure consciousness is at least as devas-
tating as it is in neuroscience. A majority of theories in psychology depend crucially on
data from subjects who report what they experience in one way or another. Obviously,
theories based on measures that did not succeed in capturing the intended aspects of the
mind will be led to make false or imprecise claims.
All things considered, regardless of how much we might wish to avoid the painfully irri-
tating hard problem of measuring consciousness, many theoretical, empirical, and clinical
issues are fundamentally tied to our ability to handle it.

The structure of this book

Unfortunately, this book cannot provide a complete overview of all possible or even cur-
rent approaches to measuring consciousness. In and of itself, this is an indication of the
diversity of the field. The intention with this book is to provide a first, and hopefully long,
step towards a comprehensive picture of the field. The second aim is to show readers how
methodological clarity in consciousness research is fundamental, not just to experimental
work (e.g. finding the neural correlates of consciousness) but also to many other aspects of
psychology, neuroscience, and related disciplines.
The book opens with an attempt at capturing the problems and challenges related to
measuring consciousness as precisely as possible (Overgaard, Chapter 2). The second
chapter summarizes historical and current suggestions for how to measure conscious-
ness, and generally how one might handle consciousness empirically (Timmermans and
Cleeremans, Chapter 3). Hereafter, the chapters go through a series of paradigms: Visual
masking (Bachmann, Chapter 4), metacognitive manipulation (Song, Koizumi, and Lau,
Chapter 5), signal detection theory (Sherman, Barrett, and Kanai, Chapter 6), statistical
learning (Destrebecqz, Franco, Bertels, and Gaillard, Chapter 7), and binocular rivalry
(Brascamp, Chapter 8). Each chapter presents a particular method in as much detail as
6 Consciousness research methods: the empirical “hard problem”

possible, discussing unanswered questions, up- and downsides, and practical suggestions
to help scientists, scholars, and students make an “informed choice” when deciding to use
or understand a particular method.
Next follows a series of chapters with the same approach but a different type of content.
They focus on various subjective measures rather than paradigms. These are about inten-
tional binding (Jensen, Di Costa, Haggard, Chapter 9), confidence ratings (Norman and
Price, Chapter 10), and the perceptual awareness scale (Sandberg and Overgaard, Chap-
ter 11). The next two chapters introduce and discuss statistical methods to analyze and
interpret results from experiments using methods from previous chapters (or other related
methods). One discusses the relations between Bayesian and standard statistical methods
(Dienes, Chapter 12), another discusses regression models (Mouridsen, Chapter 13). Fi-
nally, Chapter 14 by Klein and Hohwy comments on the previous chapters and discusses
the attempt to measure consciousness from a philosophical perspective.

References
Chalmers, D.J. (1995) Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2,
200–219.
Chalmers, D. (1996) The Conscious Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83, 435–451.
 Chapter 2

The challenge of measuring

consciousness
Morten Overgaard

Introduction
Few things in the human intellectual history have given rise to so many different theories,
opinions, discussions, and academic frustrations as consciousness. While being incredibly
complex, as this chapter will show, consciousness is not just an academic concept, access-
ible only to specialized scientists in a particular field, as it is the case with many other com-
plex topics in science, such as quantum particles or cell division. Consciousness is directly
accessible to all living humans, possibly all living creatures, from the moment they wake
up until they fall into dreamless sleep.
This chapter discusses some central definitions of consciousness and their relations to
different measures, i.e. their “operationalization.” As it will be argued, introspection is in-
volved in all kinds of measures of consciousness at some level. Accordingly, the chapter
examines different uses of introspection, and the relation between introspection and con-
sciousness. Finally, some criteria for adequate measures of consciousness are discussed.

Measures and definitions

Although we have such intimate familiarity with consciousness, a definition of the con-
cept does not follow automatically. From one perspective, one could care little about
definitions if the purpose is to have experimental investigations of consciousness. Defin-
itional and methodological questions are separate issues: definitional issues are matters of
conceptual analysis and attempt to carve out non-circular descriptions with criteria that
make sure to include anything we wish to consider as conscious, while excluding any-
thing we will not consider as such. Methodological issues deal with questions about the
validity of specific measures of consciousness and how these measures may relate to other
measures, such as measures of brain activity. At the same time, it seems very obvious that
the only way one may evaluate the validity of any measure of consciousness is by its re-
lation to consciousness as such, i.e. its definition. I will not argue that we can only trust
experiments on consciousness when we have a formal, universally accepted definition
of consciousness. Empirical measures are often too crude to relate to minute conceptual
aspects, so in so far as definitional issues have no impact on which measures to apply,
8 The challenge of measuring consciousness

there is no reason to wait for a potential final definition. So, in the following, a few crude
distinctions will be discussed.
In his article On a confusion about a function of consciousness (1995), Ned Block suggests
a distinction between “access-consciousness” (so-called A-consciousness) and “phenom-
enal consciousness” (so-called P-consciousness). A-consciousness refers to a state on the
basis of which a subject is able to reason, to have rational control of action and of speech.
P-consciousness refers to experiences (seeing the color red, thinking about rain, the sonar
sense of a bat, or whichever examples one might prefer). Both definitions refer to aspects of
what we may mean when saying we are conscious of something, yet are different aspects in
an important sense. Whether the two concepts refer to actual, empirically different states
is frequently debated (Block 2005; Kouider et al. 2010), but they certainly suggest different
ways to measure consciousness. If one wishes to conduct experiments on, say, the neural
basis of A-consciousness, the definition comes with behavioral and thus third-person ac-
cessible features, although rather unspecific. If one, instead, looks for the neural basis of
P-consciousness, one may end with measures with an important overlap with methods
used to study A-consciousness, but one needs to make the further argument why those
methods represent the first-person state in question as this definition comes without any
third-person-observable features.
Another commonly agreed distinction is one between the contents and the levels of
consciousness (Hohwy 2009; Overgaard and Overgaard 2010). A- and P-consciousness
are both examples of contents, whereas typical examples of levels of consciousness are
coma or the vegetative state, sleep, or drug abuse. Methods to study levels of consciousness
would obviously differ from those relevant to study the contents, and involve even further
problems as one here cannot rely on behavioral measures or communication (Owen 2006;
Overgaard 2009). Although one should hypothesize some relation between the contents
and the levels of consciousness (Overgaard and Overgaard 2010; Bachmann 2012), these
discussions are outside the stringent focus on behavioral methods here.
These days, most consciousness researchers would agree that the concept of conscious-
ness does not, a priori at least, refer to a particular psychological function or behavior, but
to the fact that we have subjective experiences such as the taste of good coffee, the sound of
a dog barking, or frustrating thoughts about consciousness (Chalmers 1996). Whereas the
examples one might give in order to illustrate the contents of consciousness may result in a
rather heterogeneous list, all examples share the one feature that they are subjective. Many
important historical attempts to define consciousness more precisely stress the subjective
aspect. For instance, Nagel (1974) argues that if there is something it like for a bat to have a
sonar sense, then bats must be conscious creatures. Although most suggestions for precise
definitions of consciousness are controversial, there is good agreement that consciousness is
subjective in the sense that only the one person having the conscious experience, regardless
of its contents, has direct knowledge about it. The subject of an experience seems to have a
special kind of access to the particular content, different from the kind of access you can have
to the content of other people’s experience (e.g. when those other people describe their ex-
periences). This core feature of consciousness is what makes it so scientifically challenging.
 Challenges to the scientific study of consciousness 9

Challenges to the scientific study of consciousness

But why should subjectivity be a challenge to science? The reason is probably not to be
sought for at the level of concrete methodology or theory, but rather at a more general
or paradigmatic level of background assumptions. That is, even though there is far from
perfect agreement on how to define science and what constitutes good research, there are
a number of fundamental criteria that define when an observation is scientifically valid.
Such criteria are, however, most often implicit. Arguably, basic elements of our conception
of what constitutes “good science” can be traced to Galileo in what might be the historical
birth of a systematic natural science in 1632 (Bunge 1998). Such conceptions include the
ideas that objects for scientific study always must be generally accessible through a “third-
person perspective” (if only one person is able to observe a particular object, it cannot be
accepted as a scientific object), or that scientific results must always be replicable so that
when the same (relevant) causal conditions are present at time A and B, the same effects
must be observed.
Whereas one might add more such “basic conceptions of good science,” the first one
mentioned captures most of the problems. If scientific objects can only be those we
have “third-person access” to, why should we think we could ever have a science about
consciousness?
It seems that the only solution available is to associate conscious experience with par-
ticular kinds of third-person observables, typically particular kinds of behavior or, in ex-
periments, “responses.” In the attempt to find neural correlates of consciousness (NCC),
for instance, neither consciousness nor the “neural processes” are directly observed. For
this reason, the actual correlations are between our measures of neural processes and
measures of consciousness (typically a particular conscious content such as seeing red or
thinking about a cup of coffee), as seen in Figure 2.1. If measures on both “sides” perfectly
match ontology (i.e. that the actual neural processes are exactly as the apparatus informs
the scientist, and that the actual experienced content is exactly as reported), the “proper”
NCC (or “pNCC”) can be reduced to its measure (or the “mNCC”). In other words, the

mNCC

Subjective Subjective Objective Brain

state measure measure state

pNCC
Fig. 2.1 The “proper NCC” (pNCC) is only identical to the measured NCC (mNCC) if measures
fully represent the relevant states. (Reprinted from Consciousness and Cognition, 15(4), Morten
Overgaard, Introspection in Science, pp. 629–33, figure 3a Copyright (2006), with permission
from Elsevier.)
10 The challenge of measuring consciousness

mNCC has to fully represent the pNCC in a given experiment. In case some aspect of
the mNCC represents something else (an artefact), or in case the pNCC contains aspects
that are not represented in the mNCC, one obviously cannot derive a pNCC from that
experiment.
As we have no method to transform subjective experiences to third-person-accessible
information without losing the subjectiveness, our measures inevitably have to be indi-
rect. This is, however, not very different from the case in many other scientific disciplines,
where one has no “direct” knowledge of molecules, genes, or radio waves, yet is fully able
to conduct experiments, create generally accepted and understood scientific explanations,
and predict future events. The problem may not be that a science of consciousness is, at
least in these regards, “special,” but rather that the scientific field is still a long way from
having standardized methods. As one example, some researchers repeatedly find prefron-
tal activations when subjects report to be conscious of visually presented numbers (Del
Cul et al. 2009), whereas others claim that re-entrant activity in occipital regions correlates
better with consciousness when reporting whether face icons look happy or sad (Jolij and
Lamme 2005).
The two different claims are based on evidence from experiments that have applied
rather different experimental techniques, making a direct comparison complex. Ac-
cordingly, most experiments applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the
occipital cortex at around 100 ms after stimulus onset show a disruption of visual con-
sciousness, and may be used as evidence to suggest that the NCC for visual perception is
a re-entrant process to primary visual cortex. The same conclusion is often proposed by
research in blindsight, where patients with V1 lesions often report no conscious experi-
ence (Stoerig and Cowey 1997). Other experiments using change blindness or inatten-
tional blindness paradigms typically demonstrate that the conscious noticing of a change
activates a frontoparietal network (Mack and Rock 1998). Interestingly, the research field
often acts as if differences in NCC models can be solved by just doing more experiments
rather than by developing those methods that have given rise to the results, and thus also
the differences.
Even if “subjectiveness” seems a common denominator in different conceptions of con-
sciousness, this does not in and of itself reveal how to operationalize consciousness ide-
ally. One illustration of two operationalization options comes from a recent discussion by
Block (2011) and Cohen and Dennett (2011); see a more thorough discussion in Over-
gaard and Grünbaum (2012). The discussion centers on the classical Sperling experiment
(Sperling 1960). Here, subjects were only able to report letters from one of three rows
presented on a screen. However, with post-stimulus cueing, subjects could report what-
ever row they were asked. Block believes that we experience seeing the entire display of
letters, yet we report only a limited amount, or, in other words, that conscious experience
“overflows” the cognitive functions involved in accessing and reporting the experience.
Cohen and Dennett, however, take a different point of departure in their interpretation
of Sperling, namely that conscious content must have a cognitive function. According to
their view, a person cannot be conscious of X but be principally unable to report about X
 Challenges to the scientific study of consciousness 11

or be unable to use it for rational control of action. Against Block, they argue that it makes
no sense to ascribe consciousness of X to a subject if the subject denies seeing X. Going
along with this idea, it is natural to think that consciousness plays a cognitive role, and that
a subject is conscious of some information if it is used by the subject’s cognitive system in
a particular way.
The discussion is important because it shows a fundamental conflict in conceptions
about consciousness and, as a consequence, methods to study it. It seems mutually exclu-
sive that consciousness overflows cognitive functions and that consciousness is identical
to a cognitive function. Both ideas may seem intuitively compelling, but either we accept
overflow but also accept that consciousness is not identical to a function (at least in a cog-
nitive understanding) or we accept that consciousness is indeed a cognitive function, but
deny overflow. This debate cannot be resolved empirically. This is so because the debate is
essentially pre-empirical as it concerns questions that determine how to gather and think
of empirical data in the first place (Overgaard and Grünbaum 2012).
Accordingly, one approach will argue that consciousness is identical to or inherently
related to a particular cognitive function. The idea has the immediate advantage that op-
erationalization becomes much more tangible, as one may use already established experi-
mental paradigms to study consciousness. For example, if consciousness is fundamentally
associated with or identical to working memory, all measures of working memory will also
be measures of consciousness.
The opposite approach considers consciousness to be a state, a process, or a property
that is not identical to or deeply associated with some (other) cognitive state. By dissociat-
ing consciousness from cognitive capacities (Rees and Frith 2007), one will in most cases
stay with a subjective criterion as the only acceptable measure. As a consequence, any
measure that can be said to be about something other than subjective experience cannot
be applied.
The choice between the “cognitive” and “non-cognitive” approach (Overgaard and
Grünbaum 2012) is decisive for one’s criteria of consciousness, experimental methodol-
ogy, and, as a necessary consequence, findings. Despite attempts by researchers on both
sides, the dispute between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness cannot
be settled by empirical evidence. As neither position can be stated in an empirically falsifi-
able manner, the debate cannot itself be resolved by empirical data. In the end, the deci-
sion about which approach to prefer is a matter of personal preference rather than about
arguments.
There are specific challenges associated with the two choices. If one decides not to
associate consciousness with any particular cognitive function, it is difficult to trust
any measure of consciousness. For instance, why should the cognitive functions in-
volved in saying “I am conscious” be a valid measure of consciousness? Nevertheless,
with the lack of other measures, a “non-cognitive” assumption would typically lead to
a use of subjective reports in some way. But when is a subjective report scientifically
trustworthy? Although we all have good intuitive ideas about the meaning of concepts
about subjective states (such as thoughts, feelings, or perceptions), their precision and
12 The challenge of measuring consciousness

value as scientific concepts are debatable. Introspective reports, however, inevitably

make use of such concepts.
Associating consciousness with some cognitive function, e.g. in the attempt to get rid
of some of the problems associated with introspection, is potentially circular. This seems
a necessary consequence of the way in which such an association can be formed, deciding
which cognitive function to associate with consciousness. In order to make such a deci-
sion, one could employ at least two different strategies. One strategy could be to conduct
several experiments, correlating cognitive functions with consciousness. This strategy
would, however, need an independent measure of consciousness in order to make the
association. Were this measure the presence or absence of another cognitive function, it
would obviously lead to infinite regress (because this association with another cognitive
function, again, must be validated by yet other measures, etc.). Thus, the most plausible
measure would be introspective reports, and, consequently, the strategy would not be in-
dependent of introspection but carry along its strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. As
a different strategy, one could avoid experiments using introspection and just decide to
associate consciousness with, say, attention because it “feels like” the case that those two
phenomena occur together. This would, however, then depend on the researcher’s own in-
tuitions, which hardly could be based on anything other than his or her own introspection.
It would be difficult to argue why researchers’ introspection has any more scientific value
than the introspection of experimental subjects.
So, regardless of which kind of measure is preferred in a given experiment, introspection
seems an unavoidable condition at some point in consciousness research.

Introspection and access

Although introspection seems unavoidable regardless of methodological choice, it may
be brought to use in different ways. The most minimal use of introspection is arguably as
“inspiration” or “direction” for objective methods.
Arguably, the only reason why one would ever come up with the idea to investigate
“color experience” or “emotional experiences,” even with so-called objective methods, is
because we know these states by way of introspection. This knowledge, then, guides our
methodological choices.
For example, the process dissociation procedure (PDP) has been proposed as an objec-
tive method for examining the influence of unconscious processing as the method does
not rely on subjective reports but on a measured difference between performance in two
different tasks: the exclusion and the inclusion task (Jacoby 1991). The argument for the
procedure is that unconscious processes are supposed to be affected by a briefly presented
priming word, and in the inclusion task both unconscious and conscious processes will
thus contribute to report a target word. In the exclusion task, however, unconscious pro-
cesses will contribute to report the primed word whereas conscious processes will at-
tempt to avoid it. The relative contribution of conscious and unconscious processes may
thus be estimated by comparing performance in the two tasks. This kind of “objective
 Introspection and access 13

approach” avoids using verbal reports, but it does not avoid introspection in the minimal
sense. Without ideas about what conscious experience is, the experiment would make
no sense.
So-called subjective methods attempt to use introspection directly as a method or as
part of a method. For example, neurophenomenology typically tries to understand ex-
perience itself, rather than just cognitive or neural processes, by explicitly using reports
(Gallagher 2009).
Typically, objective methods study behavior or reports that are not about consciousness,
while subjective methods study reports that are. It is, however, far from always obvious
to identify what is an objective and what is a subjective method. As one example, “post-
decision wagering” was introduced as an objective measure (Persaud et al. 2007). Here,
subjects place a monetary wager on the correctness of their own response to a stimulus,
the amount of which is considered a measure of how conscious they were of that stimulus.
However, since wagering subjects try to maximize their gain, and since the very idea is that
they, in order to place the wager, explicitly consult how conscious they were (which is why
it could be a measure of consciousness), it seems to have many features in common with
subjective measures.
Regardless of methodological choice, some of the same basic criteria seem necessary
for a measure to be a valid measure: it should be exhaustive, i.e. sensitive to all aspects of
conscious experience, and exclusive, i.e. it should not measure something unconscious—at
a proper level of conceptual granularity. In the following, these three aspects (exhaust-
iveness, exclusiveness, and granularity) will be presented, after, however, a discussion of
introspection and its relation to measures of consciousness, as introspection of some kind
is involved in all measures of consciousness.
Regardless of methodology, a measure of a conscious state is obviously not identical to
the conscious state itself, and, thus, seems to involve further states having access to the
conscious state.
Even though the report, as a verbal utterance, obviously is different from the “internal,”
subjective state, it is less clear whether the very act of introspecting also is such a separate
state. The issue is important as it potentially introduces a particular kind of complexity in
the attempt of having a “pure” measure of consciousness, and, accordingly, the chance of
deriving a pNCC from an mNCC.
John Searle (1992) has argued that a conscious state can only be described in terms of
what the state represents, and, as a consequence, our awareness of a conscious state as
such is always just awareness of the very object represented by the conscious state itself.
Therefore no such distinction between being introspectively aware of a conscious state and
being in a conscious state exists. Fred Dretske (1995) has argued that we are never aware
of our mental states ourselves, although we can be aware of the fact that we have a mental
state. Introspection can be seen as an instance of what he calls “displaced perception”: we
come to know how much petrol is left in the car’s tank by looking at the gauge. In a similar
way, we come to know that we are in a particular type of mental state by being aware of the
objects represented by one’s mental states.
14 The challenge of measuring consciousness

As has been pointed out by proponents of the higher-order thought theory of state con-
sciousness (HOT), this critique might rest on a particular conception of what is meant by
“awareness of a mental state.” Thus it is possible to maintain that we never have experiences
of our mental states like the way we have experiences of things in the world—that is, by
having perceptual experiences—but that we nevertheless might be said to be aware of our
conscious mental states by having thoughts about them (Rosenthal 2000a).
According to this view, introspecting a conscious state is to have an accompanying
thought about that state, a thought that is itself conscious, attentive, and deliberate. From
the HOT perspective the basic distinction between conscious states and introspective
states is sustained: a subject’s having a conscious state is explained in terms of the sub-
ject’s having a second-order thought about a mental state of his or her. This higher-order
thought need not itself be conscious, although it might sometimes become so by the sub-
ject’s in turn having third-order thoughts about them. When this happens, the subject is
engaged in introspection (Rosenthal 2000b).
The coherence of HOT explanations regarding conscious states and introspection re-
spectively are issues, which can be kept apart. One may argue that HOT is a good ex-
planation of how to understand the relation between conscious states and introspection
without committing to the view that it is a good explanation of consciousness.
As mentioned above, there has been much historical skepticism about a science based
on introspection. This skepticism is often presented as a historical disagreement between
early twentieth-century research groups, suggesting that introspection is “hopelessly un-
reliable.” Recent work has challenged this idea (Costall 2006, 2012), and re-examination
of laboratory records reveals that disagreements between, say, Würzburg and Cornell were
disagreements about interpretations of results, rather than the results themselves (Monson
and Hurlburt 1993). Skepticism about introspection, and the use of it, seems to have been
around for centuries.
Comte, for instance, argued that introspection is scientifically useless as there cannot be
identity between an observer and the observed object (Lyons 1986). Comte argued that
this would lead to an illogical “splitting” of consciousness in two. Many classical accounts
of introspection in psychology, based on James (1898), suggest that “online” introspection,
as an ongoing observation of current mental states, does not exist. Rather, James suggested
that all introspection is in fact retrospection—an inspection of memories of previous ex-
periences. This interpretation of introspection can be taken as a response to Comte’s ob-
jection against a splitting of consciousness. In the light of the discussion between first- and
higher-order accounts of introspection, James’ perspective seems to support the HOT ver-
sion, as the first-order variety seems fully compatible with an “ongoing” or “direct” intro-
specting act.
Very few experiments have been designed to directly test these questions. Marcel (1993)
demonstrated a dissociation between responses when using eye blinks, hand movements,
and verbal reports. The dissociation was shown in a blindsight patient as well as in normal
participants. When the patient and the participants were instructed to introspect, they gave
the most accurate reports when using eye blinks for “yes-reports,” less accurate when using
 Exhaustiveness and exclusiveness of measures 15

hand movements, and the least accurate when using verbal reports. The blindsight patient
could even reply “yes, I am aware of a light” while at the same time—during the same
stimulus trial—reporting “no” with hand gestures. This pattern was not present when the
patient was told to report non-introspectively. Overgaard and Sørensen (2004) expanded
on this experiment and showed that a dissociation between the response modes used by
Marcel (1993) was only found when instructing participants before showing a stimulus.
When the order of the instruction and stimulus was reversed, no dissociation was found.
This result of Overgaard and Sørensen (2004) that introspection changes the participants’
behavior only when the instruction is given prior to the stimulus could be interpreted to
indicate that introspection has an effect on perception rather than on retrospective mem-
ory processes. The interpretation, although supported by little evidence, can be taken to
go against James’ retrospection account, and seems fully compatible with the first-order
account of introspection.
Overgaard et al. (2006) conducted an evoked response potentials (ERP) experiment at-
tempting to contrast introspective and non-introspective conscious states. Subjects were
asked to report the presence or absence of a gray dot in two different conditions—one
in which they were asked to consider the stimulus of an “object on the screen,” and an-
other in which they were to consider it “a content in their own experience.” The study
found differences between conditions in early occipital components, later attention-­
related components, and even later post-perceptual components. Although the study has
not been replicated, a cautious interpretation could be that introspection seems to affect
“pre-perceptual,” “perceptual,” and “post-perceptual” processes. Such interpretation does
not exclude retrospective elements but suggests that there is more to introspection than
retrospection alone.
Whether introspection is an online inspection of ongoing experiences, a retrospective
activity, or a combination, all alternatives face challenges with regards to the validity of
subjective reports. The retrospection alternative is confronted with problems related to
the fallibility of memory. If our only access to our own conscious states is by way of trying
to remember them, this access is obviously far from “certain knowledge.” The “online ver-
sion” allows for an introspective “observation” of experiences as they occur. Although the
actual report is still delayed in time, and therefore also confronted with memory issues, at
least the actual accessing of the experiences is not. However, here, it seems possible that the
act of introspection may change the experience itself. We have no good evidence to believe
that mental states are simply additive, i.e. that the presence of two simultaneous states is
identical to the “sum” of the two occurring in isolation. Accordingly, one may fear that a
science based on introspection may tell us a lot about introspective conscious states, but
nothing about non-introspective conscious states.

Exhaustiveness and exclusiveness of measures

Another discussion, parallel to the question of whether introspective access may change the
contents of experience, is the question whether a measure of consciousness is exhaustive
16 The challenge of measuring consciousness

and exclusive. One can reasonably demand of a good measure of consciousness that it
detects all relevant aspects of experience. Such “demands” have been referred to as exhaus-
tiveness, and it is very likely that different measures differ in their degree of exhaustive-
ness (Overgaard and Timmermans 2010; Overgaard and Sandberg 2012). By a measure’s
exhaustiveness, it is typically meant that a measure or task should be sensitive to every bit
of relevant conscious content, so that we may avoid erroneously describing behavior as
resulting from unconscious mental processes (Timmermans et al. 2010).
By exclusiveness, one typically refers to the “flip side” of exhaustiveness. As a measure
of consciousness should measure all relevant experiences, it should exclusively measure
experiences, and thus be immune to influences from unconscious knowledge.
The issue is particularly relevant in debates about perception “in the total lack of con-
scious experience,” which has come to be the central topic of investigation in the attempt to
measure differences between consciousness and unconsciousness (and, thus, find the rele-
vant contrasts to measure NCCs) (Hassin 2013). Here, the problem arises in cases where
subjects report no conscious awareness where in fact there may be some vague experience
or sensation, which is hard to express verbally. Such cases of bad exhaustiveness would
lead actual experiences to be misclassified as unconscious in the data analysis, and thus
misconstrue the measured NCC.
In cases with poor exclusiveness, subjects report irrelevant experiences, or, potentially,
totally unconscious influences. For instance, subjects may be influenced by other experi-
ences of, say, confidence, insecurity, or positive or negative emotions in their report of the
relevant content. In such cases, irrelevant content will be misclassified as relevant, and
thus, in a different way, misconstrue the measured NCC.

Conceptual granularity
Bechtel and Mundale (1999) argue that one central issue, relevant to the study of con-
sciousness, is that psychological as well as neural properties can be described with differ-
ent “granularities.” They argue that psychological properties often are described at a very
“coarse” level of granularity, whereas neural properties are described at a much “finer”
level.
Overgaard and Mogensen (2011) suggest that mental functions can be described at least
three different levels of analysis. At the most general level, we find “visual perception,”
“intention,” “emotion,” or the like. At a more “fine-grained” level, there are task- and do-
main-specific functions. There may be several “subtypes” of the general category “visual
perception” that are specific to certain kinds of stimuli (faces, rectangles, the color purple)
or kinds of representation. Finally, there are basic functions as a kind of discretely operat-
ing system without any direct manifestation at a conscious or behavioral level.
Obviously, any measure of consciousness must somehow specify some “line of demar-
cation,” i.e. which exact subjective experiences are of relevance. Concepts about mental
states at one level of analysis are of course not more or less precise than concepts at others.
Yet, concepts at one level may confound concepts at different levels. One example could
 Future directions 17

be Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments, arguably showing that the conscious experience
of wanting to move is delayed around 500 ms compared to the onset of a neural response
potential in premotor cortex (Libet 1985). In these experiments, the subjects were to watch
a round clockface that included a moving dot. At some point, they were to initiate a volun-
tary movement and to note the location of the dot on the clock at that point in time. The
subjects were explicitly asked to monitor their own mental state in order to report the time
of their first “awareness of the wish or urge to act” (Libet 2002, p. 292). Without question-
ing the result, which has been repeatedly replicated (Vinding et al. 2014), the interpret-
ation may be challenged. In order for a subject to report the first awareness of a wish, the
subject must apply some criterion for when such an experience is present. The seeming
fact that nothing reported “as a wish” was subjectively present until 500 ms after the onset
of the readiness potential is not the same as to say that no relevant subjective experience
was present 500 ms earlier, which, however, was subjectively different or was chosen based
on different criteria. In other words, had the experiment applied concepts at different lev-
els of granularity, results might have appeared different.
Other previous discussions apply to the interpretation of the experiment as well. The
method is clearly introspective, and, even disregarding the questions of conceptual granu-
larity, it is not obvious whether it is the conscious experience of wanting to move or the
introspective access that is delayed half a second.

Future directions
The last decades have seen an impressive upsurge of research into consciousness. Today,
the majority of this research takes one of two paths: a “philosophical” strategy, analyzing
the conceptual connection between the notions of consciousness and physical matter, or a
“cognitive neuroscience” strategy, applying some measure of consciousness to find empiri-
cal connections with measures of brain activity. Research from these strategies has added
greatly to our understanding of the human mind and of neural circuitries, but, as evident
from the discussion in this chapter, we are still far from solid ideas about how to measure
consciousness.
Given the great interest in consciousness, methodological obstacles may be among the
primary challenges to achieve solutions to the mind–body problem. Some may even say
they constitute the primary challenge, in that a scientific approach to subjective experience
would appear much simpler if one had the perfect measure of consciousness. In the lack of
an external, objective method to measure consciousness, how are we to know if we actu-
ally do find an optimal measure of consciousness? Even with no straightforward answer,
an interdisciplinary cooperation seems necessary in order to ensure that operationaliza-
tion of subjective experience in experiments captures the essence of what we mean by the
concept, and in order to identify all possible confounding factors.
Although the amount of problems seems breathtaking, the gain of progress is high. Were
we to one day succeed in addressing all issues related to the measuring of consciousness, a
solution to the age-old mind–body problem would seem much more within reach.
18 The challenge of measuring consciousness

Acknowledgments
Morten Overgaard was supported by the European Research Council.

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 Chapter 3

How can we measure awareness?

An overview of current methods
Bert Timmermans and Axel Cleeremans

Introduction
It would be pushing at an open door to state that the study of consciousness is challenging
because it attempts to develop an epistemically objective approach to a phenomenon that
is ontologically subjective (Searle 1997). How can I objectively have access to what another
person thinks or experiences? Can a person him-/herself objectively assess or report what
he/she thinks? Does introspection afford privileged access, or is it merely glorified hetero-
phenomenology? And even if introspection were truly reliable, do introspective reports
reflect one’s actual phenomenological experience, or merely an interpretation thereof in
light of task demands? These challenges, which present themselves in a particularly harsh
light when it comes to establishing unconscious information processing, reflect the fact
that the study of consciousness requires a solution to the following fundamental—and as
yet unsolved—problem: How can we measure consciousness?
While there has been substantial progress in measuring the level of awareness (Casali
et al. 2013; Sitt et al. 2014), and we have made steady progress delineating the neural cor-
relates of consciousness (NCC) (Boly et al. 2013), we do not know of any instrument or
method that makes it possible to measure the contents of awareness directly (Seth et al.
2008). Having such an instrument (i.e. a consciousness-meter) would make it possible to
establish clear relationships between an external state of affairs, people’s subjective experi-
ence of this state of affairs, and their overt behavior. However, neither does such an instru-
ment exists nor can we conceive of any way of building it (though some are trying; Haynes
and Rees 2005; Kamitani and Tong 2005; Formisano et al. 2008; Haynes 2009).
Thus, today, the best we can do to find out what someone currently experiences is to ask
them to produce a report about it. Verbal report is the most direct method we can use to
find out if a person is aware of some knowledge. But this, as appealing as it is, is fraught
with complexity: people may refrain from or simply be unable to report on vague experi-
ences; reports are typically not obtained at the time the experience occurs; people may be
biased in different ways that often interact with each other (see Newell and Shanks, 2014,
for a potent list of caveats). Even introspection—first-person data per excellence—has
demonstrable limits (Nisbett and Wilson 1977; Johansson et al. 2006; Carruthers 2009).
For these reasons, many authors have rejected subjective methods altogether and have
22 How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods

instead turned to using so-called objective methods. Objective methods typically involve
asking people to choose between different carefully constructed alternatives (i.e. as in a
two-alternative forced-choice task) rather than describing what they saw or felt. Objective
methods, however, while they present the obvious advantage of producing third-person,
objective data, make the debatable assumption that there is a clear distinction between
direct and indirect appraisals of knowledge (see Figure 3.1).
Further, many authors have questioned the conceptual foundations of such methods
for they presuppose, unlike subjective methods, that awareness of some information and
(behavioral) sensitivity to that same information involve the very same processes. This
approach, sometimes called the objective threshold approach or the worldly discrimination
theory approach (Gaillard et al. 2006; Fu et al. 2008) takes it as a given that there is a perfect
overlap between performance on a certain well-defined task and awareness. And yet, it is
easy to imagine counter-examples. For instance, one can find oneself in a situation where
one experiences a feeling of familiarity when seeing a word yet remains unable to ascer-
tain with confidence whether one actually saw that word on a list sometime earlier. Is one’s
memory of that word implicit or explicit? Choosing a behavioral marker as being indicative
of either of those processes requires making a priori assumptions about the relationships
between observable behavior and consciousness, and there are but few empirical grounds
to make such assumptions with reasonable confidence. For these and further reasons, re-
cent years have seen an upsurge of interest in reinvented subjective measures, as well as
wider adoption of subjective threshold approaches, through which one seeks to compare
performance and self-reported awareness.
The above exposé is illustrative of how difficult it is to devise an appropriate measure
of awareness. A further challenge is to devise appropriate paradigms through which to
deploy such measures. Irrespective of whether the divide lies between subjective versus
objective (subjective threshold) approaches or direct versus indirect (objective threshold)

Objective Subjective

First-order Metacognitive
Identification
forced-choice Confidence judgment
Direct Verbal report
Subjective threshold

discrimination wagering
Type I d’ PAS
Type II d’
Objective threshold
Behavioral or Behavioral or
neural correlate of neural correlate of
Indirect Priming, RT first-order metacognitive
experience judgment

Fig. 3.1 Relationship between different types of consciousness measures, indicating objective and
subjective threshold.
 Introduction 23

approaches, most experimental paradigms dedicated to exploring the relationships be-

tween conscious and unconscious processing have relied on a simple dissociation logic
aimed at comparing the sensitivity of two different measures to some relevant informa-
tion: a measure C of subjects’ awareness of the information, and a measure P of behav-
ioral sensitivity to the same information in the context of some task. As discussed above,
unconscious processing, according to the simple dissociation logic, is then demonstrated
whenever P exhibits sensitivity to some information in the absence of correlated sensitivity
in C. A typical example of such a situation is priming, in which processing a target stimulus
is facilitated (P) by the prior presentation of an associated prime stimulus even when par-
ticipants report (C) not having seen the prime.
There are several potential pitfalls with the simple dissociation logic, however. First, the
measures C and P cannot typically be obtained concurrently. This “retrospective assess-
ment” (Shanks and St John 1994) or immediacy (Newell and Shanks 2014) problem entails
that finding that C fails to be sensitive to the relevant information need not necessarily
imply that information was processed unconsciously during encoding, but that, for in-
stance, it might have been forgotten before being elicited. A second issue is to ensure that
the information revealed through C is indeed relevant to perform the task. This is known
as the information criterion or relevance criterion. For instance, successful classification in
an artificial grammar learning (Reber 1967; Cleeremans 1993) task need not necessarily
be based on knowledge of the rules of the grammar, but can instead involve knowledge of
the similarity relationships between training and test items. Participants asked about the
rules of the grammar would then understandably fail to offer relevant explicit knowledge.
A third issue is to ensure that C and P respect the sensitivity criterion, that is, that both be
equally sensitive to the same relevant information.
Both the tension between objective and subjective methods and the relevance criterion
problem suggest that it might simply prove elusive to hope to be able to obtain measures of
awareness that are simultaneously exclusive and exhaustive with respect to knowledge held
consciously. In other words, finding null sensitivity in C, as required by the dissociation
paradigms for unconscious processing to be demonstrated, might simply be impossible
because no such absolute (i.e. simultaneously exhaustive and exclusive) measure exists. A
significant implication of this conclusion is that, at least with normal participants, it makes
little sense to assume that conditions exist where awareness can simply be “turned off.”
Much of the ongoing debate about the existence of subliminal perception can be attrib-
uted to a failure to recognize the limitations of the dissociation logic, compounded by the
inherent statistical limitations in reasoning based on null effects (for a discussion of how
Bayesian approaches may help address this latter challenge see Dienes 2014).
It might therefore instead be more plausible to assume that any task is always sensitive
to both conscious and unconscious influences (regardless of whether one conceives of
conscious and unconscious influences as independent or not, which is a further issue).
In other words, no task is process-pure. Two methodological approaches that specifically
attempt to overcome the conceptual limitations of the dissociation logic have been de-
veloped. The first was introduced by Reingold and Merikle (1988), who suggested that
24 How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods

the search for absolute measures of awareness should simply be abandoned in favor of
approaches that seek to compare the relative sensitivity of direct measures and indirect
measures of some discrimination. The second approach—Jacoby’s (1991) process dissoci-
ation procedure (PDP)—constitutes one of the most significant advances in the study of
differences between implicit and explicit processing. It is based on the argument that, just
as direct measures can be contaminated by unconscious influences, indirect measures can
likewise be contaminated by conscious influences: particular tasks can simply not be iden-
tified with particular underlying processes (see also Dunn and Kirsner 1988). The PDP
thus aims to tease apart the relative contributions of conscious and unconscious influences
on performance.
With these considerations in mind, we first present a historical overview that may help
explain how the current set of methods and measures came to be. We then proceed to ana-
lyzing different pending issues and attempt to offer ways forward.

The quest for thresholds

In this section, we focus on what types of measurements we can seek to obtain with re-
spect to consciousness. Somewhat paradoxically, the first measures of consciousness were
not aimed at establishing conscious content, but rather at establishing the lack thereof.
The main interest in developing a measure of awareness lay in trying to “peek behind the
doors of the unconscious”—assessing the degree to which human behavior may be influ-
enced by information that is not perceived consciously. Thus, the focus lay on establishing
a threshold between conscious and unconscious processing, so taking consciousness as a
dependent variable that may tell us something about whether and how the outside world
was processed. The deceptively simple starting point was: can we, by varying stimulus in-
tensity in one way or another, determine a point at which such a stimulus ceases or begins
to be perceived?

Subjective measures
Perception without subjective awareness
To understand the seemingly paradoxical importance of unconscious processing to the
study of consciousness, one has to keep in mind that in the 19th century, whereas the ex-
istence of unconscious processes was acknowledged by both Hermann von Helmholtz and
Wilhelm Wundt, it was believed that whether one could see a stimulus or not depended
exclusively on stimulus properties, and that a weak stimulus simply failed to be picked up
by the sensory organs. Peirce and Jastrow (1885) were the first to go against this notion
and to empirically demonstrate subliminal visual perception, conceptualized as perception
in the absence of conscious experience. They found that they could make accurate forced-
choice judgments about the relative weight or brightness of objects, even when they re-
ported no confidence in their own judgments. Similarly, Sidis (1898) showed people cards
with a letter or digit from such a distance that participants reported not to be able to see
anything, at which point he concluded that they were unaware of perceiving either digits
 The quest for thresholds 25

or letters. However, when he used a second measure—forced-choice guessing—his parti-

cipants were able to guess the category of the card (digit or letter). Importantly, both Pierce
and Jastrow’s and Sidis’ results do not merely show a dissociation between perception and
awareness, with unconscious information influencing behavior; they also demonstrate
that for one and the same stimulus one can design tasks that are differentially sensitive to
aspects of perception related to consciousness.
Thus, while the subjective, verbal reports expressed by participants suggested that they
had simply failed to entertain a visual experience of the critical stimuli, the objective, be-
havioral measures based on the forced-choice task suggested that they had nevertheless
processed the stimuli to some extent. Crucially, the threshold delineating the boundary
between conscious and unconscious perception is a subjective threshold: we say that parti-
cipants are unaware of the stimulus when their report indicates no perception.

Are subjective measures exhaustive?

Ideally, one would want any measure of any entity to be at least exhaustive, in the sense that
you want it to capture any, even the most minimal, presence of that entity, all the more so if
your goal is precisely to exclude that entity. This, of course, means that such minimal pres-
ence must be measurable in the first place. Indeed, a problem with the behavioral methods
used by Pierce and Jastrow and Sidis is that their perception in the absence of awareness is
crucially dependent on the notion that all mental states are at least potentially accessible to
conscious report and that careful introspection can exclude the possibility that conscious
knowledge bears on the objective measure (the forced-choice task).
However, failure to report knowledge may simply reflect a conservative response cri-
terion (Eriksen 1956, 1960; Goldiamond 1958; Björkman et al. 1993). Thus, participants
may fail to report knowledge not because they do not have it, but because it is held with
very low confidence. According to Eriksen, rather than taking an awareness measure that
is subject to such response bias, a better measure would be one that measures people’s
sensitivity rather than their response criterion. To put it simply, the core of the exhaust-
iveness problem tied to assessing absence of awareness is that absence of evidence is never
evidence of absence: it is not because you fail to establish the presence of awareness that
it is altogether absent (see section “Issues with measuring the absence and presence of
awareness”).

Are subjective measures exclusive?

In addition to the requirement that measures of consciousness should be exhaustive (meas-
uring all conscious knowledge), ideal measures of consciousness should also be exclusive:
they should reflect only conscious knowledge. When a person reports his or her intro-
spective awareness of a stimulus, then this rating will obviously be influenced by the de-
gree to which he/she is aware of the stimulus, but it may also be influenced by unconscious
knowledge. Indeed, if I assume that unconscious knowledge has a causal influence on a
person’s behavior, then there is every reason to think that this knowledge will also exert
indirect influence on his/her introspection and reports. Assuming that the person was
26 How can we measure awareness? An overview of current methods

shown a barely visible square and he/she reports having seen a square, then it is possible
that this response is simultaneously informed by conscious and unconscious knowledge.
Another aspect of the exclusiveness issue was illustrated in a seminal study by Nisbett
and Wilson (1977), who asked people to judge which of four pairs of nylon stockings
they felt were best. People then had to justify their choice. Participants were unaware that
the four items were in fact identical to each other and most actually chose the last pair
they had examined. Nevertheless, most participants motivated their choice by appealing
to the qualities of their chosen pair of stockings rather than simply stating that all pairs
felt identical and that their choice had been arbitrary. This study, as well as later concep-
tual replications (Johansson et al. 2006), showed that people, even in the absence of rel-
evant knowledge, will confabulate knowledge—knowledge that is perhaps influenced by
unconscious processes. However, whereas people may indeed be poor at identifying the
causes of their own behavior, this does not necessarily mean that their evaluation of their
own phenomenal experience should automatically be disqualified. What such studies do
point out is that people may not know what knowledge is enough for the correct decision.
This information criterion issue implies that, even though participants may have seen a
brief glimpse of a shape in a subliminal perception experiment, they will not report it,
as they think it has no bearing on their response selection, where in fact it does. In other
words, the conservative response criterion suggested by Eriksen may reflect not just peo-
ple’s unwillingness or inability to report what they see, but also the information criterion.
Introspection depends not only on being able to report available information, but also on
being able to identify task-relevant information.
The crisis of faith for introspective methods following Eriksen’s critique had two major
consequences: the move towards objective measures as a direct means of establishing the
absence of awareness, and consequentially the use of priming and associated methods as
an indirect way to show the influence of unconscious knowledge.

Objective measures
Objective measures and the introduction of priming
According to Eriksen, subjective reports might reflect a participant’s response criterion
(indicated as c in the formalism of signal detection theory (SDT), see Green and Swets
1966; Macmillan and Creelman 1991) to one specific conscious process, rather than being
indicative of the boundary between conscious and unconscious experience. Discrimina-
bility, or sensitivity, on the other hand (indicated by d’), is held to be independent of such
a bias according to SDT. Subsequently, forced-choice identification tasks have come to be
known as “objective measures of awareness”: if a person can discriminate between two
stimuli, then he/she must have been aware of them. Obviously, this very definition makes
subliminal perception a priori impossible, since the phenomenon is understood as visual
abilities (e.g. discrimination) in the absence of consciousness. Were consciousness to be
operationalized as one such “visual ability,” clearly, one could never find “visual ability in
the absence of consciousness.”
Other documents randomly have
different content
flyer that will carry an operator and supplies of fuel for a flight of
over 500 miles at a speed of 50 miles an hour.
 APPENDIX V
CURTISS’S EXPERIMENTS IN RISING FROM THE WATER[83]

During the past two years Glenn H. Curtiss, who, more than any
other experimenter, has been given to developing the aëroplane for
various uses, has experimented with floats for his biplane that would
enable it to rise from the surface of the water. Something over a
year ago he succeeded in developing a speed of about twenty miles
an hour on the water, but this was insufficient to rise from the
surface.
At the beginning of the new year Mr. Curtiss moved to the Pacific
Coast and set about endeavoring to develop suitable floats which
would make it possible for his machine to rise from the surface of
the water. These experiments have been carried on at San Diego,
where Mr. Curtiss is instructing several naval and military officers in
the art of flying.
In his first experiments on the Pacific Coast Mr. Curtiss followed
the successful experiments of this sort made by M. Henri Fabre at
Marseilles, France, about a year ago, as far as the design of his
floats was concerned. He constructed one large float six feet wide,
five feet from front to rear, and one foot thick at its central point,
and placed this under the center of the machine. The bottom of this
float was perfectly flat and arranged at an incline of ten or twelve
degrees. Some distance forward of the main float, at about the
position of the front wheel in the land machine, another float six feet
wide, by one foot from front to rear, and six inches deep, was
placed; while at the extreme front end of the machine, on a special
outrigger, was mounted a small elevating hydroplane six feet wide by
eight inches in a fore-and-aft direction, and one and one-half inches
thick. This hydroplane was fixed at an angle of about twenty-five
degrees and was intended to lift the front part of the machine. A
spray shield was fitted back of it, as shown in the diagram, page
333.
The first experiments were made with these new floats on January
26th last; and although they made a considerable disturbance in the
water, especially at low speed, the aviator was enabled to get up a
speed on the surface of about forty-five miles an hour. He found that
at as low a rate as ten miles the hydroplanes (which normally were
submerged) rose to the surface, while as the speed increased only
the rear edges of the two main planes were required to support the
machine. The aëroplane readily attained sufficient speed to rise in
the air, for as the speed increased and the floats emerged from the
water, the head resistance of the floats diminished and there was
only the skin friction of the water on a few inches of the rear edge of
these floats, plus the air resistance, to be overcome.
At the first try-out, while traveling over the water at high speed,
Mr. Curtiss found himself suddenly nearing the shore, and to avoid
running aground he turned his horizontal rudder sharply upward,
with the result that the machine rose from the water with perfect
ease. He soon alighted again, and in the second flight he made a
circle and remained in the air a minute and twenty-one seconds.
Two other experimental flights were made the first day, and on
January 27th he made a three-and-one-half-minute flight and stated,
upon alighting, that he found no difficulty in remaining aloft as long
as he pleased. The machine showed a speed of fifty miles an hour in
the air as against forty-five miles an hour when skimming over the
surface of the water.
 PLATE XXXII.

CURTISS STARTING FROM THE WATER.

CURTISS BIPLANE FOR LAND AND WATER.

 CURTISS TRIPLANE RISEN FROM THE WATER.

Not satisfied with the several floats with which he had attained his
first success in rising from the water, Mr. Curtiss immediately
constructed a single float twelve feet long by two feet in width and
twelve inches deep. This float is built of wood and resembles a flat-
bottomed boat or scow, the top being covered with canvas to keep
the water from getting in. Three feet from the front end the bottom
is curved upward forming a bow the full width of the float, while at
the same distance from the rear the float slants downward in a
similar manner.
This single float is placed under the aëroplane in such a position
that the main weight of the machine and aviator is slightly to the
rear of the center of the float, which causes the latter to incline
upward slightly and thus gives the necessary angle for hydroplaning
on the surface of the water. The weight of this new float is but fifty
pounds, or less than half as much as that of the two floats that were
used before.
The paint was barely dry on the new float before Mr. Curtiss had it
fitted to his machine and gave it a trial. This was done on February
1st and the trial was thoroughly successful. The machine ran over
the surface of the water with very much less disturbance than before
and rose in the air readily. A glance at the photographs showing the
new and the old floats in action will give one an excellent idea of the
much less commotion caused by the single scow-shaped float.
Besides being much more compact and creating less disturbance,
this float or scow can be used for carrying articles or a passenger.
In order to keep the aëroplane from tilting to one side or the
other, an inclined stick four feet long and three inches wide, to which
is attached on its upper side an inflated rubber tube, is fastened to
the front edge of the lower plane at each end. By the use of these
props the aëroplane does not tip readily when skimming along the
surface, even though the scow-shaped float used is but two feet in
width.
After meeting with success with his new float, Mr. Curtiss, on
February 17th, made more flights with the motor and propeller
placed at the front of his biplane and with his seat placed at the rear
of the main planes. The chief of these flights was one which he
made from North Island, where he is experimenting, over San Diego
harbor to the cruiser Pennsylvania. He alighted upon the surface
close beside the cruiser and his aëroplane was hauled up beside the
warship and placed on her deck.
After a short visit on the cruiser the aviator was again lowered to
the surface in his machine. A sailor started the engine, and Mr.
Curtiss flew back to his starting point in short order. The naval
authorities were greatly pleased with his demonstration and it is
probable that the Navy Department will purchase one of these
machines in the near future and continue the instruction of its
officers.
After increasing the surface of his biplane Mr. Curtiss, on February
24th, took up one of his naval pupils, Lieutenant T. G. Ellyson, as a
passenger. He made a flight of one and one-half miles, rising to a
height of one hundred feet and flying as slowly as twenty-five miles
an hour, or as fast as fifty miles an hour, at will. Lieutenant Ellyson
was seated on the pontoon below the aëroplane. He could look
down in the water and see bottom at a depth of twenty-five feet,
and he believes submarines can be easily located by flying over the
water. The slow speed at which it is possible to fly will make the
biplane especially useful for bomb dropping. As we go to press Mr.
Curtiss is about to try his machine fitted with wheels and floats as
well.
INDEX
Abbe, Cleveland, 200, 437.
Acosta, 10.
Ader, C. F., 222–226.
Aërial Experiment Association, 264–267, 305.
Aëro Club of America, 243, 244, 322, 323.
of France, 106, 256, 258, 259, 301.
of Great Britain, 287.
Aëro Corporation Limited, 322.
Aërodrome, 111, 194, 240, 292.
Aëronat, 126.
Aëronautic meteorology, 347 et seq.
Aëronautic Society of New York, 284.
Aëronautical Annual, 215, 227, 427.
Aëronautics, 252.
Aërophile, 130, 166, 340.
Aëroplanes, Ader’s, 222–226.
advances in, in 1909, 283, 284.
Aërial Experiment Association’s, 264–267.
Antoinette, 288, 289, 320, 324.
Blériot’s, 267–270, 286, 287, 290–292, 299, 300, 309.
Bréguet’s, 313.
Chanute and Herring’s, 218–221.
Cody’s, 305.
competitive flying of, 283 et seq.
cost of, 342.
Curtiss’, 264–266, 284–286, 294–300, 316, 317, 322, 333.
Delagrange’s flights with, 261–263.
Demoiselle, 324.
Deperdussin’s, 399.
earliest public flight of, 257.
Esnault-Pélterie’s, 304, 314, 337.
Etrich’s, 335, 336.
Fabre’s, 332, 335.
Farman’s, Henri, 259–264, 298, 303, 305, 321.
Farman’s, Maurice, 305, 311.
 first tour in, 268–270.
first town-to-town flight in, 264.
Grade’s, 304.
Hanriot’s, 339.
Herring’s compressed air, 221, 222.
impossibility of, 12.
Langley’s, 239–243.
launching of, 202.
Le Bris’, 203–205.
Lilienthal’s, 207–209.
Mattullath’s, 235–239.
Maxim’s, 226–228.
model, 173 et seq.
Montgomery’s, 251–255, 282.
Mouillard’s, 207–209.
Nieuport’s, 339.
nineteenth century, 202 et seq.
Paulhan’s, 324, 325.
Pilcher’s, 216–218.
public flying, 256 et seq.
reliability of, 341.
Santos-Dumont’s, 256–258, 303, 324.
stability of, 232–234.
stable and powerful, 235 et seq.
Tellier’s, 312.
utility of, 341.
Voisin’s, 259, 267, 313.
Wright brothers’, 245–249, 270–282, 309, 324, 326, 329.
Zahm’s system of control of, 229–231.
Aërostal, 22.
Æschylus, 29.
Agobard, 22.
Ailerons, 286.
Air bag, 83.
Air friction, 238, 239.
Airscout, 11, 12.
Allen, Gen. James, 271.
Alps, Chavez’s flight across, 318, 319.
Altitude records, 307–309.
American Engineer and Railway Journal, 229.
American military dirigible, 138.
Antoinette monoplane, 288, 289, 309, 320, 324, 340.
Archdeacon, Ernest, 256.
Archibald, Douglass, 77.
Archytas of Tarentum, 198.
Arlandes, Marquis de, 38–42.
Ascending trend of wind, 211.
Assman, Professor, 72.
Astra Society, 120, 123, 124.
Atmosphere, composition of, 348–350.
cyclones, tornadoes, waterspouts, 394 et seq.
general circulation of, 376–380.
general properties of, 347 et seq.
permanent and periodic winds, 376 et seq.
temperature and pressure, 363 et seq.
thunderstorms, windgusts, 422 et seq.
Aubrun, Emile, 331.
Audemars, 324.
Automobile Club of France, 321.

Bacon, Roger, 20.

Balance, complete dynamical, 234.
Baldwin, F. W., 264, 266.
Thomas S., 138.
Ballonets, 95.
Ballons sondes, 72.
Balloon, dirigible:
Baumgarten and Wölfert’s, 99.
Belgique, 129.
Blanchard’s, 79, 80.
British and American, 130, 131.
Clément-Bayard I, 123.
é
Clément-Bayard II, 131, 132, 133.
combined with aëroplane, 123.
Colonel Renard, 124, 126.
development of rigid, 145 et seq.
Dupuy de Lome’s, 19, 92, 93.
early experiments with Zeppelin, 147–150.
early gasoline driven, 10 et seq.
electric, 92–97.
España, 124, 126, 127.
first designs for, 78–86.
general design of Zeppelin, 146, 147.
German aërial fleet, 141, 142.
German nonrigid, 138.
Giffard’s, 90, 91, 98.
Gross type of, 138, 139, 140, 471–473.
Hänlein’s, 98.
Hopkinson’s suggestion for, 84.
Italian, 130.
Jaune, 115, 116.
Jefferson’s suggestion for, 84.
Jullien’s model, 88.
Lebaudy, 116, 117.
Lebaudy’s, 115–120, 134–137.
Liberté, 120.
maneuvers at Cologne, 143, 144.
Meusnier’s designs for, 85, 86.
Miolan and Janinet’s, 81.
Morning Post, 134.
muscular driven, 80, 82, 85, 92.
Parseval type of, 138, 139, 140–143, 473–476.
Patrie, 115, 118, 119.
Porter’s, 86, 87.
practical development of nonrigid, 115 et seq.
practical speed of, 101.
Renard and Krebs’, 93–97.
Republique, 115, 118, 119, 466.
 Robert’s, 81, 82, 83.
Russie, 120.
Santos-Dumont’s, 102–114.
Schwartz’s, 99, 100.
steam, 87, 89.
successful military, 456.
two systems of, 101.
types of, 122.
U. S. Military I, 138, 476, 477.
Ville de Nancy, 124, 125.
Ville de Paris, 120–123, 467–471.
voyage of across English channel, 132, 136, 137.
in Zeppelin, 153–156.
Zeppelin IV, explosion, 157, 158.
Zeppelin passenger service, 167–169.
Zeppelin type of, 145–169.
Zodiac type of, 127, 128, 129.
passive:
cabinet for lofty ascents in, 71, 72.
Charles’ passenger, 42, 43.
cruise of, from London to Weilburg, 54.
dragon fire-inflated, 20.
earliest conceptions of, 18, 29.
earliest experiments with, 30, 31, 32.
early history of, 29 et seq.
first coal gas, 54.
first human passengers in, 38.
first hydrogen, 35.
first passengers in, 37.
first scientific ascension in, 44, 45.
Glashier’s observations in, 64–70.
highest ascent of, 69, 70, 71, 72.
instruments and adjuncts to, 76, 77.
largest hot air, 48–50.
largest gas, 70, 71.
longest voyage of, 74.
 modern spherical, 75.
Nadar’s Geant, 60, 61.
practical development of, 54 et seq.
principle of, 18.
public inauguration of, 33, 34.
recent improvements in, 76, 77.
ripping panel of, 74, 75.
sounding and pilot, 72.
voyage across the Atlantic in, 74, 75.
across the English channel in, 50, 52.
Paris to Meaux in, 61, 62.
Paris to Nienburg in, 62, 63.
Balsan, 74.
Baltimore aviation meet, 319.
Baltimore Sun, 319.
Barometric pressure, 363 et seq.
distribution of, 370–374.
gradient of, 370.
high and low areas of, 372.
hygrometric features of, 373.
mechanical features of, 373, 374.
modifying conditions of, 371, 373.
surfaces and lines of equal, 370, 371.
Basenach, 138.
Baumgarten, 99.
Belgique, the, 129.
Bell, A. G., 194, 244, 264–267.
Bell, Mrs. A. G., 264.
Belmont Park, 310, 322.
Bennett international contests, 75, 292–301, 325, 326.
Berson, Professor, 70.
Betheny Plain, 292.
Bielovucic, Jean, 313.
Bigelow, Professor, 412, 413.
Biplane, 174, 220.
Birds, armed against airships, 11.
 as men carriers, 10, 11, 12.
major limit of, 11, 12.
Bishop, Cortlandt Field, 285.
Black, 29.
Blanchard, 15, 16, 18, 50, 79, 80.
Blériot, Louis, 267–270, 286, 287, 290–292, 299–300, 380–382.
Bréguet, Louis, 313.
Brookins, Walter, 309, 326.
Brown, D. S., 193.
Bubbles, soap and varnish, 30.

Calm belts, 381.

Cammerman, Lieutenant, 314.
Cardan, 10.
Catapult, 240, 338.
Cavallo, 30, 31.
Cavendish, 29.
Cayley, Sir George, 181, 182.
Chanute, Octave, 15, 181, 218–221, 245, 250, 256, 260.
Charles, 35.
Charlière, 42.
Chauvière, 125, 136, 331, 339.
Chavez, George, 318, 319.
Circuit de l’Est, 339, 331.
Clément-Bayard, the, 123, 131–133, 456–459.
Cody, S. F., 305.
Colonel Renard, the, 124, 126.
Compagnie General Transaerienne, 124.
Control, three rudder system of, 229–331.
Coulomb, 17, 18.
Country Life, 321.
Coxwell, 64–70.
Critical temperature and pressure, 351.
Cross-country records, 311–314.
Curtiss, Glenn H., 138, 264–266, 282, 284–286, 294–300, 316,
317, 322, 323, 481 et seq.
Cyclone, frequency of, 403, 404.
motions and pressures in, 395, 400.
motive power of, 395.
nature of, 394.
progression of, 401–403.
stationary, 403.

Daedalus, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Daily Mail, London, 314.
Daimler engine, 99, 150.
Dante, J. B., 13, 14.
Dauberck, Dr. W., 403.
Da Vinci, 8, 9.
De Bacqueville, 13, 14.
Delagrange, Leon, 261–263.
Delcourt, Dupuis, 100.
De Laland, 16, 18.
De Lesseps, Count, 327, 328.
De Lome, Dupuis, 91, 92, 93.
Demoiselle monoplanes, 324.
Déperdussin, 339.
Deutsche de la Meurthe, 120 259.
Dew point, 358.
Dientsbach, Carl, vii, 164.
Distance records, 311–314.
Doldrums, 381.
Doubleday, Page & Co., 478.
Drift, defined, 186.
Dubonnet, 312.
Du Cros, Arthur, 131.
Dutrieu, Helene, 321.
Dynamic flyers, 174.

Endurance records, 311–314.

Engine, Daimler, 99, 150, 163.
Gnome, 312.
 Körting, 139.
Mercedes, 140.
Panhard-Levassor, 136.
Rénault, 311.
Vivinus, 129.
Engineering News, 435.
English Channel flights, 50–53, 56, 137, 289–292.
English military dirigibles, 130–137.
Eole, 223.
Equator of balloon, 76.
Equilibrium, of angels, 7, 8.
Esnault-Pélterie, Robert, 304, 314, 337, 340.
España, the, 124, 126, 127.
Espy, 419, 420.
Etrich, Igo, 335, 336.

Fabre, 332–335.
Farman, Henri, 259–264, 298, 303, 305, 321.
Maurice, 305, 311.
Federation Aëronautique International, 322, 323.
Fequant, Lieutenant, 312.
Ferber, Captain, 256.
Ferrel, W., 356, 376–379, 397, 413, 436.
Fin, 229.
Flesselle, the, 48, 49, 50.
Flexible balloons, 122, 123.
Fluctuating winds, 427–439.
cause of, 436–438.
impact of, 435, 436.
Flying machine, impossibility of, 12, 17.
Flying machine models, 173 et seq.
Abbe’s proposed, 200.
Cayley’s aërial glider, 181, 182.
Da Vinci’s helicopter, 175.
Da Vinci’s parachute, 177, 178.
Forlanini’s helicopter, 200.
 Garnerin’s parachute, 179.
Hargrave’s, 190, 191.
Helicopter, 198–201.
Henson’s aëroplane, 182–184.
Henson and Stringfellow’s, 184, 185, 187.
Langley’s, 192–197.
Launoy and Bienvenu’s, 198, 199.
Lenormand’s parachute, 177, 178.
Paper traveling parachutes, 180, 181.
Penaud’s toy, 188.
Phillips’ aëroplane, 191, 192.
Phillips’ helicopter, 199.
Tatin’s aëroplane, 189.
Veranzio’s parachute, 177, 178.
Wenham’s aëroplane, 185, 186.
Zanonia Macrocarpa, 180.
Forbes, A. Holland, 6.
Forlanini, Professor, 200.
Fort Myer flights, 138, 272, 275–281.
Foulois, Lieutenant Benjamin, 278.
France, the, 93–97.
Franklin, Benjamin, 48, 446.
Free air, composition of, 349.
conditions of precipitation in, 351, 352.
critical points of constituents of, 351.
dynamical properties of dry, 353, 356.
friction of, 239.
humidity and density of, 358–361.
kinds of expansion of, 361, 362.
properties of moist, 357, 361.
French Academy, 17, 35.
French dirigibles, 88–129.

Garnerin, Jacques, 179.

Garros, 324.
Gasnier, Réné, 340.
German Airship Society, 166, 167.
German dirigibles, 138–169.
Giffard, Henri, 71, 88, 89, 90, 91.
Glaisher, James, 68–70.
Gliding machines, 203–221, 245–248.
Gnome engine, 312, 331, 340.
Godard, 62, 74, 129.
Gold-beater skin balloons, 30, 88.
Grade, 314.
Grahame-White, Claude, 315, 316, 319, 325, 327, 328.
Gravitational stability, 233.
Green, Charles, 54.
Gross, Major von, 138.
Gross dirigibles, 138, 139, 140.
Guide rope, or drag rope, 56, 76, 111, 114.

Hailstorms and hailstones, 415–419.

Hamilton, C. K., 313.
Hammer, W. J., vii.
Hangar, 126.
Hänlein, 98, 99.
Hann, 365.
Hanriot, 339.
Hargrave, Lawrence, 190, 191, 250, 260, 339.
Harmon, Clifford B., 321.
Hawley, A. R., 75.
Hazen, Prof. H. A., 435.
Hearne, 131, 228.
Helicopters, 198–201.
Helmholtz, Prof. Ludvig von, 436–438.
Henson, 182–184.
Herring, A. M., 218–222, 245, 271.
Holland, Robert, 54.
Hopkinson, Francis, 84.
Horner, 414.
Hoxsey, Arch, 309, 324.
Huffaker, E. C., 247.
Hull, best forms of, 88, 97, 98, 113.
stiffening of, by internal pressure, 83, 86.
Humidity, absolute, 359.
percentage of, 358.
Humphreys, Dr. W. J., vii, 349, 370.
Hydro-aëroplanes, 332–334, 481 et seq.
Hydrogen balloon, invention of, 29–31, 35.
first ascent of, 36.
Hydrogen bubbles, 29.

Icarus, 3, 4, 5.
Ice, launching from, 265.
Indian seed parachute, 180.
Inherent stability, 229.
Insolation, effect on density of air, 364.
quantity of, received, 364–366.
Isobaric lines and surfaces, 371.
Isothermal lines, surfaces, 366, 367.
Isothermal layer, 370.
Italian Aviation Society, 318.
Italian military dirigibles, 130.

Jaune, the, 115, 116.

Jefferson, Thomas, 84.
Jeffries, 50.
Johnstone, Ralph, 309, 324, 329.
Jullien, 88.
Julliot, Henri, 115, 134, 136.
June Bug, the, 266, 267.

Kai Kaoos, 8, 9, 10.

Kapferer, H., 120, 294.
Keel surface, 120.
Kinet, Daniel, 312.
Kinetic stability, 233.
Kite balloon, 77.
Körting, 139.
Krebs, Captain, 93–97.
Kress, Wilhelm, 214.

La Belgique, 129.
La España, 124, 126, 127.
La Flesselle, 48, 49, 50.
La France, 93–97.
Lahm, Lieutenant Frank P., 272, 277.
La Liberté, 120.
Lambert, Count de, 273, 302.
Lana, 23, 24.
La Nature, 312.
Land-and-sea breezes, 392.
Landelle, G. de la, 203.
Langley, S. P., 187, 192–197, 211, 231, 232, 239–245, 251, 427,
433, 434, 439.
La Patrie, 115, 118, 119, 459–465.
La République, 115, 118, 119.
La Russie, 120.
Latent heat of condensation, 364.
Lateral balance of aëroplane, 229–231.
Latham, Hubert, 283, 288–290, 291, 319, 320, 324.
Launching an aëroplane, 202, 230, 256, 258, 259, 265.
Launching methods, 202, 240, 258, 259, 265.
Launoy and Bienvenu, 198, 199.
Laurens, 314.
La Ville de Paris, 120–123.
Lebaudy, the, 116, 117.
Le Blanc, Alfred, 273, 290, 310, 313, 326, 331.
Le Clément-Bayard, 123, 131–133, 456–459.
Le Colonel Renard, 124, 126.
Lefebvre, 293.
Leganeaux, U. G., 311, 319.
Lenormand, Sebastien, 177, 178.
Levino, A. S., vii.
Lift, defined, 186.
Lilienthal, Otto, 210–216, 250.
London Daily Mail, 289.
Loomis, 402, 414.
Lord Rayleigh, 6, 427.

McCurdy, J. A. D., 264.

MacMechen, 164.
Madison, James, 84.
Malecot, 123.
Maloney, D., 251–255.
Manley, Charles M., 242, 245, 251, 285.
Marconnet, Captain, 312.
Marey, Professor, 427.
Marvin, Prof. C. F., 435.
Mason, Monck, 55.
Mattullath, Hugo, 231, 235–239.
Maxim, Sir Hiram S., 226–228, 245.
Mendoza, 19.
Mercedes, 140.
Meteorological Journal, 435.
Meusnier, General, 85, 86.
Michelin prize, 273, 303, 311, 314, 321.
Milton, 7.
Moisant, John, 31, 328.
Monaco, Prince of, 111.
Monge, Marey, 100.
Monoplane, 174.
Monsoons, 385–391.
Montgolfier, 29, 37, 50.
Montgolfière, 42.
Montgomery, Prof. J. J., 251–255, 282, 339.
Moore, Willis L., 349, 405, 422.
Morane, 310.
Morning Post, 131, 134–137.
Motors, 340.
Antoinette, 254, 258.
Clément-Bayard, 458.
Daimler, 99, 150, 163.
Electrical, 92, 95.
Gnome, 312.
Körting, 139.
Mercedes, 140.
Panhard-Levassor, 136.
Rénault, 311.
steam, 228, 234.
Vivinus, 129.
Mouillard, L. P., 206–209.
Mountain-and-valley winds, 293.
Munn & Co., 481.
Muscular flight, 3–7.

Nadar’s balloon, the Geant, 60.

Nassau, Great Balloon of, 55.
Nature, 217, 427.
Nieuport, 339.
Northcliffe, Lord, 305.

Olieslaegers, Jan, 311.

Orthopters, 174.
Ovid, 3.

Panhard-Levassor, 136.
Parachutes, 176–81.
Parseval dirigibles, 138, 140–143.
Parseval, Major von, 77, 138.
Passive fliers, 174.
Patrie, the, 115, 118, 119, 459–465.
Paulhan, Louis, 284, 293–296, 305, 311, 315, 316, 317, 324,
325.
Peltier, H., 456.
é
Pénaud, A., 188.
Pendular stability, 233.
Philadelphia Ledger, the, 313.
Phillips, Horatio, 191, 192, 199.
Picardie military maneuvers, 131.
Pilcher, 216–218, 246.
Polignac, Marquis de, 301.
Porter, Rufus, 86, 87.
Post, Augustus, 6, 75.
Power expended in flight, 6, 7.
Power flyers, 174.
Pressure, critical, 351.
atmospheric, 370–374.
Preussen, the, 70.
Projectile stability, 232.
Propeller, Chauvière, 125, 136.
Puy de Dome, 314.
Pylons, 292.

Rayleigh, Lord, 6, 427.

Records, aëroplane,
altitude, 307–309.
cross-country, 311–314.
distance, 311.
duration, 311–314.
load, 311–314.
speed, 310–311.
Red Wing, 265, 266.
Relative humidity, 358.
Renard, Captain, 93–97, 210.
République, the, 115, 118, 119.
Reye, Dr., 414.
Rheims aviation contests, 292–301.
Riedinger, August, 140.
Rigid balloons, 122.
Robert, 42, 45, 81, 82, 83.
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