Laws of concatenated perception: Vision goes for novelty, decisions for perseverance

Abstract

Every instant of perception depends on a cascade of brain processes calibrated to the history of sensory and decisional events. In the present work, we show that human visual perception is constantly shaped by two contrasting forces exerted by sensory adaptation and past decisions. In a series of experiments, we used multilevel modeling and cross-validation approaches to investigate the impact of previous stimuli and decisions on behavioral reports during adjustment and forced-choice tasks. Our results revealed that each perceptual report is permeated by opposite biases from a hierarchy of serially dependent processes: Low-level adaptation repels perception away from previous stimuli, whereas decisional traces attract perceptual reports toward the recent past. In this hierarchy of serial dependence, “continuity fields” arise from the inertia of decisional templates and not from low-level sensory processes. This finding is consistent with a Two-process model of serial dependence in which the persistence of readout weights in a decision unit compensates for sensory adaptation, leading to attractive biases in sequential perception. We propose a unified account of serial dependence in which functionally distinct mechanisms, operating at different stages, promote the differentiation and integration of visual information over time.

History biases reveal novel dissociations between perceptual and metacognitive decision-making

“…Understanding sub-optimal decision-making represents a fundamental enterprise in modern psychology and neuroscience 46 . In line with previous studies, we show that choice history represents a source of task-irrelevant choice variability, both for perceptual decisions 16–21,27 and confidence reports 31 . Most participants displayed positive history biases: they were more likely to repeat perceptual decisions and confidence ratings even though stimuli were presented in a random order and hence previous choices were of no relevance.…”

“…Under this model, biasing of the type-1 criterion by previous choices (Fig 3D) could occur due to asymmetry in either the starting point or drift rate of the evidence accumulation process. Urai et al, 20 show compelling evidence across six tasks that drift rate bias provides the best account, in line with persistence of decisional weights over time/trials 18,27 , an interpretation which is fully in line with our results. An intriguing avenue for further research would be to model the temporal dynamics of both type-1 and type-2 decisions 57 in order to ascertain the mechanism(s) of history induced type-2 criterion shifts (Fig 4E-F).…”

“…As is known for decision-making, metacognitive judgements might rely partly on heuristics and simplifications which result in systematic biases under particular conditions, including lab-based tasks with high levels of uncertainty 8,71,73–75 . In natural settings, it may generally be advantageous to assume statistical regularity of environmental stimuli and to default to this model/heuristic under conditions of high uncertainty 27,28 . If the metacognitive system has less access to objective evidence than the perceptual system, then stronger history biases of confidence ratings are likely to occur.…”

“…Even in healthy individuals, perceptual and metacognitive decisions not only depend on the immediately available evidence, but also on recent experiences and choices. For instance, when similar stimuli are serially presented, perceptual decisions are often biased towards responses and/or stimuli on preceding trials, a phenomenon known as choice history bias 16–21 or serial dependence 22–27 . Whilst this mechanism may generally be adaptive, because recent experience usually predicts upcoming input, it can also lead to non-veridical decisions 23,28–30 .…”

Same Stimulus, Same Temporal Context, Different Percept? Individual Differences in Hysteresis and Adaptation When Perceiving Multistable Dot Lattices

“…Whether hysteresis and adaptation effects are the result of the same process or of two separate processes is still under debate. Whereas some argue that both effects can be explained through a single mechanism of sensory integration operating over varying timescales (Mattar, Kahn, Thompson-Schill, & Aguirre, 2016), of persistent bias (Gepshtein & Kubovy, 2005), or of neuronal adaptation (Maus, Chaney, Liberman, & Whitney, 2013), others state that both are separate processes, either in the same neuronal location (e.g., Brascamp et al, 2008) or in distinct cortical networks (Fritsche, Spaak, & de Lange, 2020;Pascucci et al, 2019;Schwiedrzik et al, 2014). Additional arguments for assuming separate mechanisms are differences in the extent to which hysteresis and adaptation are dependent on attention, are modulated by subjective confidence, are modulated by working memory delay, or exhibit clear spatial specificity (for an overview, see Fritsche, Spaak, & de Lange, 2020).…”