Self as a prior: The malleability of Bayesian multisensory integration to social salience

Abstract

Our everyday perceptual experiences are grounded in the integration of information within and across our senses. Due to this direct behavioural relevance, cross‐modal integration retains a certain degree of contextual flexibility, even to social relevance. However, how social relevance modulates cross‐modal integration remains unclear. To investigate possible mechanisms, Experiment 1 tested the principles of audio‐visual integration for numerosity estimation by deriving a Bayesian optimal observer model with perceptual prior from empirical data to explain perceptual biases. Such perceptual priors may shift towards locations of high salience in the stimulus space. Our results showed that the tendency to over‐ or underestimate numerosity, expressed in the frequency and strength of fission and fusion illusions, depended on the actual event numerosity. Experiment 2 replicated the effects of social relevance on multisensory integration from Scheller & Sui, 2022 JEP:HPP, using a lower number of events, thereby favouring the opposite illusion through enhanced influences of the prior. In line with the idea that the self acts like a prior, the more frequently observed illusion (more malleable to prior influences) was modulated by self‐relevance. Our findings suggest that the self can influence perception by acting like a prior in cue integration, biasing perceptual estimates towards areas of high self‐relevance.

Temporal Properties of Self-Prioritization

“…The latter factors are often encountered in the existing literature (e.g., [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]). Therefore, it is essential to consider the distinction between the inherent automaticity of self-saliency, expectations, and stimulus familiarity [ 34 , 35 ], especially as these factors are twisted in various stages of information processing. To date, electroencephalogram (EEG) analyses have provided limited insights into how self-reference influences the dynamics of information processing, as most of the evidence comes from studies that used highly familiar complex stimuli (e.g., self-faces, names, knowledge, or voices) [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ] and included the factor of expectation [ 45 , 46 ].…”