Retrospective Attention Gates Visual Consciousness Independent of Cue Awareness and Target Report

Whether retrospective attention changes a target representation relevant to conscious perception, rather than only later report processes, remains unresolved. Across three experiments, we traced a progression from retroperception to attentional selection and to a consciousness-linked target representation. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that post-target cues altered orientation discrimination despite strongly reduced cue-location discrimination; Experiment 2 additionally revealed an N2pc modulation, a lateralized event-related potential (ERP) signature consistent with attentional selection. Experiment 3 combined parallel Report and No-report sessions with cue-controlled EEG and validity-neutral decoding. During Report, stronger target evidence predicted visibility and orientation discrimination, and Valid cues enhanced this evidence at medium contrast. Under No-report, Valid cues enhanced high-contrast target evidence. Crucially, target evidence learned entirely under No-report predicted visibility and orientation discrimination in an independent Report session, and target-present codes generalized between Report and No-report in both directions. In contrast, validity transfer was reliable only from Report to No-report. These results support the conclusion that retrospective attention can strengthen a target representation linked to conscious visibility and discrimination without requiring an explicit target report.