Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects

Abstract

Abstract:What determines what we see? In contrast to the traditional "modular" understanding of perception, according to which visual processing is encapsulated from higher-level cognition, a tidal wave of recent research alleges that states such as beliefs, desires, emotions, motivations, intentions, and linguistic representations exert direct, top-down influences on what we see. There is a growing consensus that such effects are ubiquitous, and that the distinction between perception and cognition may itself be unsustainable. We argue otherwise: None of these hundreds of studies -either individually or collectively -provides compelling evidence for true top-down effects on perception, or "cognitive penetrability." In particular, and despite their variety, we suggest that these studies all fall prey to only a handful of pitfalls. And whereas abstract theoretical challenges have failed to resolve this debate in the past, our presentation of these pitfalls is empirically anchored: In each case, we show not only how certain studies could be susceptible to the pitfall (in principle), but also how several alleged top-down effects actually are explained by the pitfall (in practice). Moreover, these pitfalls are perfectly general, with each applying to dozens of other top-down effects. We conclude by extracting the lessons provided by these pitfalls into a checklist that future work could use to convincingly demonstrate top-down effects on visual perception. The discovery of substantive top-down effects of cognition on perception would revolutionize our understanding of how the mind is organized; but without addressing these pitfalls, no such empirical report will license such exciting conclusions.

Action-specific perception of speed is independent of attention

“…Attention as an underlying mechanism could have further theoretical implications, however, in that theorists may discount action-specific effects as being perceptual (Firestone & Scholl, 2015). In challenging whether action-specific effects are truly perceptual, Firestone and Scholl have put forth six pitfalls that account for all recent claims of top-down effects on perception, including action-specific effects.…”

Are Multiple Minimal Outgroup Males Readily Associated with Threat?

“…Although previous research suggests that threat detection processes may bias the perception of emotion in faces, it might be that such processes of over-perceiving emotion in faces do not generalize to signal detection tasks involving minimal groups. Furthermore, there is ongoing debate about whether perception is influenced at all by top-down cognitive and motivational processes (Firestone & Scholl, 2016).…”

How reliable is perception?

“…For a recent strong argument against the idea that perception is thus influenced, see (Firestone & Scholl, 2016). But although not all claims of cognitive penetrability of perception offer unequivocal support, there is substantial evidence against perception being encapsulated and evidence for knowledge of various types influencing nearly every aspect of perception.…”

“…14 See also (Lupyan, 2015b) for a short commentary on Hoffman et al (2015) 15 Firestone and Scholl (2016) reinterpret Peterson and colleagues' findings by arguing that the differences between figure-ground assignment in their familiar and unfamiliar orientations "don't involve effects of knowledge per se [because] inversion eliminates this effect even when subjects know the inverted shape's identity" (see sect. 2.5 of their paper).…”