Predictions penetrate perception: Converging insights from brain, behaviour and disorder

Abstract

It is argued that during ongoing visual perception, the brain is generating top-down predictions to facilitate, guide and constrain the processing of incoming sensory input. Here we demonstrate that these predictions are drawn from a diverse range of cognitive processes, in order to generate the richest and most informative prediction signals. This is consistent with a central role for cognitive penetrability in visual perception. We review behavioural and mechanistic evidence that indicate a wide spectrum of domains—including object recognition, contextual associations, cognitive biases and affective state—that can directly influence visual perception. We combine these insights from the healthy brain with novel observations from neuropsychiatric disorders involving visual hallucinations, which highlight the consequences of imbalance between top-down signals and incoming sensory information. Together, these lines of evidence converge to indicate that predictive penetration, be it cognitive, social or emotional, should be considered a fundamental framework that supports visual perception.

The neural representation of facial-emotion categories reflects conceptual structure

“…These findings support recent theoretical and computational models of emotion and social perception which posit a fundamental relationship between conceptual knowledge and emotion perception (23)(24)(25)(26). The results also dovetail with the literature on object recognition and visual cognition more generally, which suggest that perceptual category representations in the ventral temporal cortex may be subject to the influence of predictions derived from prior knowledge, memory, and contextual associations (32,(73)(74)(75)(76)(77)(78)(79).…”

The neural representational geometry of social perception

“…For instance, being exposed to a face has long been known to spontaneously activate relevant gender or racial stereotypes [21,22], but recent work has suggested a more bidirectional relationship. Like other forms of perception, top-down expectations may facilitate certain perceptual interpretations [23,24], which in social perception may include stereotype-based expectations [2,13]. Over the years, stereotype effects have been documented on perceptual judgments [25-27], but it has remained less clear how such biases might manifest earlier in the perceptual process.…”

The Looking Glass for Intelligence Quotient Tests: The Interplay of Motivation, Cognitive Functioning, and Affect

“…Motivations drive expectations that bias human vision and perceptual mechanisms to selectively process features of the visual environment (O'Callaghan et al, 2017). This skewing of the perceptual apparatus impacts the estimates of size, distance, steepness, and salience of the objects in the visual environment (Firestone and Scholl, 2016).…”

“…This skewing of the perceptual apparatus impacts the estimates of size, distance, steepness, and salience of the objects in the visual environment (Firestone and Scholl, 2016). Moreover, expectations also help interpret ambiguous stimuli and make meaning of the perceptual settings even when constrained on information (O'Callaghan et al, 2017). Likewise, motivations also drive higher level information search and processing underlying reasoning, judgment, and decision-making (Chiew and Braver, 2011;Epley and Gilovich, 2016).…”