Causality in time:

Abstract

This chapter puts a specific priming effect in memory under the microscope, from a probabilistic point of view. Priming effects in word recognition and memory have typically been viewed as side-effects of the mechanisms of recognition — e.g. as arising from associations between lexical items, which operate automatically. It suggests, instead, that many priming phenomena may arise from the structure of the probabilistic reasoning problem that the perceiver faces. The perceiver has a range of pieces of evidence, but has to infer their likely source. When a piece of evidence from one source is attributed to another, priming may be observed. Huber demonstrates that experimentally observed priming is sensitive to the rational structure of the ‘attribution’ problem, rather than to the operation of mere associative mechanisms.

Priming and habituation for faces: Individual differences and inversion effects.

“…Mechanisms that reduce inappropriate perceptual blending while maintaining appropriate perceptual binding have been proposed both at the cognitive level, such as in Treisman's feature integration theory (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) or Biedermann's GEON theory (Hummel & Biederman, 1992), as well as at the neural level, such as with Singer's synchrony theory (Singer, 1999) or Grossberg's adaptive resonance theory (Carpenter & Grossberg, 2003). To bridge these levels of description, we have addressed the problem of temporal segregation by proposing interrelated models in terms of optimal Bayesian 'explaining away' (Huber, Shiffrin, Lyle, & Ruys, 2001; Huber, 2008a) as well as with a specific neural account in the form of habituation through synaptic depression (Huber & O'Reilly, 2003). In line with David Marr's levels of explanation (Marr, 1982), we seek to find a mapping between the computational “why” and the implementational “how” of perceptual segregation through discounting.…”