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The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception

When viewing ambiguous stimuli, people tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others. Such perceptual biases impose various types of constraints on visual perception, and accordingly, have been assumed to serve distinct adaptive functions. Here we demonstrated the interaction of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zhang, Xue, Xu, Qian, Jiang, Yi, Wang, Ying
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5292733/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28165061
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42018
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author Zhang, Xue
Xu, Qian
Jiang, Yi
Wang, Ying
author_facet Zhang, Xue
Xu, Qian
Jiang, Yi
Wang, Ying
author_sort Zhang, Xue
collection PubMed
description When viewing ambiguous stimuli, people tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others. Such perceptual biases impose various types of constraints on visual perception, and accordingly, have been assumed to serve distinct adaptive functions. Here we demonstrated the interaction of two functionally distinct biases in bistable biological motion perception, one regulating perception based on the statistics of the environment – the viewing-from-above (VFA) bias, and the other with the potential to reduce costly errors resulting from perceptual inference – the facing-the-viewer (FTV) bias. When compatible, the two biases reinforced each other to enhance the bias strength and induced less perceptual reversals relative to when they were in conflict. Whereas in the conflicting condition, the biases competed with each other, with the dominant percept varying with visual cues that modulate the two biases separately in opposite directions. Crucially, the way the two biases interact does not depend on the dominant bias at the individual level, and cannot be accounted for by a single bias alone. These findings provide compelling evidence that humans robustly integrate biases with different adaptive functions in visual perception. It may be evolutionarily advantageous to dynamically reweight diverse biases in the sensory context to resolve perceptual ambiguity.
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spelling pubmed-52927332017-02-10 The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception Zhang, Xue Xu, Qian Jiang, Yi Wang, Ying Sci Rep Article When viewing ambiguous stimuli, people tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others. Such perceptual biases impose various types of constraints on visual perception, and accordingly, have been assumed to serve distinct adaptive functions. Here we demonstrated the interaction of two functionally distinct biases in bistable biological motion perception, one regulating perception based on the statistics of the environment – the viewing-from-above (VFA) bias, and the other with the potential to reduce costly errors resulting from perceptual inference – the facing-the-viewer (FTV) bias. When compatible, the two biases reinforced each other to enhance the bias strength and induced less perceptual reversals relative to when they were in conflict. Whereas in the conflicting condition, the biases competed with each other, with the dominant percept varying with visual cues that modulate the two biases separately in opposite directions. Crucially, the way the two biases interact does not depend on the dominant bias at the individual level, and cannot be accounted for by a single bias alone. These findings provide compelling evidence that humans robustly integrate biases with different adaptive functions in visual perception. It may be evolutionarily advantageous to dynamically reweight diverse biases in the sensory context to resolve perceptual ambiguity. Nature Publishing Group 2017-02-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5292733/ /pubmed/28165061 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42018 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Zhang, Xue
Xu, Qian
Jiang, Yi
Wang, Ying
The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title_full The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title_fullStr The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title_full_unstemmed The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title_short The interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
title_sort interaction of perceptual biases in bistable perception
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5292733/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28165061
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep42018
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