Serial dependence and representational momentum in single-trial perceptual decisions

Abstract

The human brain has evolved to predict and anticipate environmental events from their temporal dynamics. Predictions can bias perception toward the recent past, particularly when the environment contains no foreseeable changes, but can also push perception toward future states of sensory input, like when anticipating the trajectory of moving objects. Here, we show that perceptual decisions are simultaneously influenced by both past and future states of sensory signals. Using an orientation adjustment task, we demonstrate that single-trial errors are displaced toward previous features of behaviorally relevant stimuli and, at the same time, toward future states of dynamic sensory signals. These opposing tendencies, consistent with decisional serial dependence and representational momentum, involve different types of processing: serial dependence occurs beyond objecthood whereas representational momentum requires the representation of a single object with coherent dynamics in time and space. The coexistence of these two phenomena supports the independent binding of stimuli and decisions over time.

Serial dependence in visual perception: A review

“…Indeed, most of the variance in adjustment errors is explained by the feature reproduced on the previous trial, rather than the physically presented one ( Pascucci et al., 2019 ). This latter observation is in line with studies demonstrating that, in adjustment tasks, the strength of serial dependence is also a function of postperceptual or postencoding factors, such as the confidence in the last decision ( Samaha et al., 2019 ; Suárez-Pinilla et al., 2018 ) and the presence of an active task ( Bae & Luck, 2020 ; Pascucci et al., 2019 ; Pascucci & Plomp, 2021 ).…”

“…Beyond standard adjustment tasks, other studies have used variants of this method to target more specific aspects of serial dependence. In the sequential no-report paradigm, stimuli are presented in a rapid stream with only occasional adjustment responses, leading to independent history of stimuli and reports (i.e., the previous stimulus does not necessarily correspond to the last report) ( Pascucci et al., 2019 ; Pascucci & Plomp, 2021 ). In this paradigm, prior stimuli and prior reports have opposite effects: The bias toward prior stimuli is repulsive, or attractive but weaker than the one toward prior reports, indicating the coexistence of two independent forms of serial dependence.…”

“…For feature-based attention, Fritsche and De Lange (2019) demonstrated that serial dependence in orientation is drastically reduced when attention is directed to the size and not the orientation of the stimulus. Attentional modulations may also partly explain results from “sequential no-report” paradigms, where sequences of nonreported stimuli may be given less attention, leading to repulsive rather than attractive serial dependence ( Pascucci et al., 2019 ; Pascucci & Plomp, 2021 ).…”

“…How does the brain maintain continuity in a world of change? Numerous recent results suggest that the visual system uses the recent past to inform perception in the present, exploiting the autocorrelation of events in the visual world ( Burr & Cicchini, 2014 ; Fischer & Whitney, 2014 ; Kiyonaga et al., 2017 ; Kristjánsson, 2022 ; Pascucci & Plomp, 2021 ). Central to this idea is serial dependence (see Figure 1 and Box 1 ), a behavioral bias where current visual decisions are biased by the history of stimuli seen before ( Fischer & Whitney, 2014 ).…”

Task feedback suggests a post-perceptual component to serial dependence

“…Since its initial discovery, numerous papers have observed serial dependencies across a range of high-and low-level perceptual dimensions, task structures, and sensory modalities (Burr & Cicchini, 2014;Liberman et al, 2014;Xia et al, 2016;Alais et al, 2017;Bliss et al, 2017;Cicchini et al, 2017;Kiyonaga et al, 2017;van Bergen & Jehee, 2017;Clifford et al, 2018;Fornaciai & Park, 2018;Liberman et al, 2018;Alexi et al, 2018;Suárez-Pinilla et al, 2018;Fritsche & de Lange, 2019;Van der Burg et al, 2019;Pascucci et al, 2019;Samaha et al, 2019;Kim et al, 2020;de Azevedo Neto & Bartels, 2021;Ceylan et al, 2021;Kim & Alais, 2021;Pascucci & Plomp, 2021;Manassi & Whitney, 2022). An unresolved question from this line of work is whether serial dependence manifests in perceptual or decision-making processes (or both).…”