Choose your own PAS? Quantitative and Qualitative Validity Evidence for the Perceptual Awareness Scale

The most preferred visibility measure in unconscious processing studies is the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS). Since it was originally proposed as a methodological approach, no PAS labels, instructions or display are currently official. Authors tend to adapt this scale to their experimental tasks often without specifying their PAS properties or without providing adequate justification for the modifications. In this work, we tested how “choosing your own PAS” affects response-process validity both quantitatively and qualitatively, in the same unconscious working memory (WM) task as in Franco-Martínez et al. (in press) replication. In a preregistered 2×2×2 between-subjects design (N = 176), we manipulated: PAS Version (Original vs New labels, updated based on pilot participants’ reports), Examples (With brief demonstrations of PAS = 4 and PAS = 1 trials vs Without them), and Display (Scale&Text shown onscreen trial-by-trial vs ScaleOnly). In a post-experiment PAS questionnaire participants were asked to qualitatively report how they recalled and interpreted the scale. The unconscious WM effect and its reliability were robust under the Version and Examples manipulations, but presenting the New Version and/or With Examples increased the proportion of valid trials, enhancing statistical power. Although the unconscious WM effect increased in the ScaleOnly Display, the qualitative evidence suggests participants in this condition tend to forget the PAS labels and ultimately use them differently from intended. Finally, we provide practical recommendations for the use of PAS and a post-experiment PAS questionnaire to evaluate its validity.