Serial dependencies act directly on perception

Abstract

There is good evidence that biological perceptual systems exploit the temporal continuity in the world: When asked to reproduce or rate sequentially presented stimuli (varying in almost any dimension), subjects typically err toward the previous stimulus, exhibiting so-called "serial dependence." At this stage it is unclear whether the serial dependence results from averaging within the perceptual system, or at later stages. Here we demonstrate that strong serial dependencies occur within both perceptual and decision processes, with very little contribution from the response. Using a technique to isolate pure perceptual effects (Fritsche, Mostert, & de Lange, 2017), we show strong serial dependence in orientation judgements, over the range of orientations where theoretical considerations predict the effects to be maximal. In a second experiment we dissociate responses from stimuli to show that serial dependence occurs only between stimuli, not responses. The results show that serial dependence is important for perception, exploiting temporal redundancies to enhance perceptual efficiency.

Serial dependence promotes the stability of perceived emotional expression depending on face similarity

“…Serial dependence was shown to act directly on perception (Cicchini et al, 2017;, biasing the appearance of our current percept and, hence, it has a perceptual component. Perceptual decisions were also proposed as a necessary component of serial dependence (Fritsche et al, 2017; but see Cicchini et al, 2017), but our results cannot be entirely explained by this. On each trial, observers make a decision regarding the emotional expression they are presented with.…”

“…Participants then saw a test screen containing a random adjustment face, which they modified by scrolling through the continuous expression wheel to match the target expression. After picking a match expression, participants saw a 1000-ms noise mask followed by a 1000-ms fixation cross before the next trial began Cicchini et al, 2014;Cicchini, Mikellidou, & Burr, 2017;Corbett et al, 2011;Liberman et al, 2014;Manassi et al, 2017). In Experiment 3, serial dependence was not ethnicity selective.…”

“…The CF is a spatiotemporal operator that may influence perception, memory, decision, and action (Kiyonaga, Scimeca, Bliss, & Whitney, 2017). It can affect appearance: it makes (even slightly different) objects look the same over time (Cicchini et al, 2017;. The CF is one mechanism (of potentially many) that could generate priming-like effects, as long as our understanding of priming is broadened.…”

“…Although there is a great deal of debate surrounding the origin of sequential dependencies in perception Cicchini et al, 2017;Fritsche et al, 2017;Kiyonaga et al, 2017;Liberman et al, 2014;Pascucci et al, 2017;Suárez-Pinilla, Anil, & Roseboom, 2018), serial dependence may very likely happen at every level of visual and cognitive processing (perception, attention, decision, memory, and motor systems), and future research should investigate the interaction (and degree of independence) between all these components. Whereas our data cannot clearly disentangle between these different components, they provide further insights regarding the types of information and selectivity that serial dependence can exhibit.…”

Individual difference in serial dependence results from opposite influences of perceptual choices and motor responses

“…Using continuous measures of perception (reproducing the presented stimuli or rating 4 on a scale), it has been shown that visual perception at a given moment is biased towards the 5 recently seen stimuli (i.e., a positive serial dependence). This has been established for various 6 attributes, from basic features including orientation (Cicchini, Mikellidou, & Burr, 2017;7 Fischer & Whitney, 2014; Fritsche, Mostert, & de Lange, 2017) and numerosity (Cicchini,8 Anobile, & Burr, 2014) to face identity (Liberman, Fischer, & Whitney, 2014). Using 9 categorization tasks, positive serial dependence was found for attributes such as orientation 10 (Cicchini et al 2017;Norton, Fleming, & Daw, 2017), motion (Alais, Leung, & Van der Burg, 11 2017) and gender of face (Taubert, Alais, & Burr, 2016), while a repulsive serial dependence 12 was found for motion-induced orientation (Alais et al, 2017), facial expression (Taubert et al, 13 2016).…”