The influence of natural image statistics on upright orientation judgements

A-Izzeddin, Emily J.; Mattingley, Jason B.; Harrison, William J.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105631

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Observers performed a task in which they rotated a small patch of an image of an outdoor scene to its upright orientation and then made confidence judgements in their orientation responses. We found that participants use internal priors about the statistical regularities of low-level visual features in natural scenes to make their perceptual judgements, replicating a recent investigation (A-Izzeddin et al, 2024).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Rather than requiring participants to learn the statistics of an arbitrary, contextual prior distribution, we used a long-term, naturalistic prior distribution that has been previously shown to affect participants' perceptual inferences: the distribution of orientation energy and phase in natural scenes. To validate this approach, in our first analysis, we confirmed a strong influence of the prior on participants' perceptual judgements as recently reported (A-Izzeddin et al, 2024).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

“…To investigate whether techniques in combination with computational modelling. To preview our results, we confirmed that participants adopted a strategy that aligned the distribution of oriented features and phase with a prior probability model of the distribution of those features in the natural world (A-Izzeddin et al, 2024). Importantly, we also found that participants used the same prior probability distribution to inform their confidence judgements, even without explicit instruction about the prior.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 75%

“…In order to better understand the computations underlying confidence judgements, we therefore sought to investigate the extent to which confidence is informed by a prior probability distribution that is derived from the statistics of natural environments, a naturalistic prior. Following a recent study (A-Izzeddin et al, 2024), we took advantage of the distributions of lowlevel features present in naturalistic stimuli to define a prior distribution, the statistics of which have been shown to bias humans' perceptual decisions (Appelle, 1972;Berkley et al, 1975;Dakin, 2001;de Gardelle et al, 2010;Girshick et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions

West

A-Izzeddin

Harrison

2023

Preprint

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Decision confidence plays a critical role in humans' ability to make adaptive decisions in a noisy perceptual world. Despite its importance, there is currently little consensus about the computations underlying confidence judgements in perceptual decisions. One leading theory suggests that confidence is computed following the rules of Bayesian inference. Accordingly, the goal of the current study was to investigate a fundamental assumption of Bayesian models: the use of prior knowledge in subjective confidence. Rather than requiring participants to internalise the parameters of an arbitrary prior distribution, we capitalised on the existing probability distributions of features in natural scenes, which are known to play a critical role in guiding perception. Participants reported the subjective upright of naturalistic image target patches, and then reported their confidence in their orientation responses. We used computational modelling to relate the statistics of the targets to participants' responses, confirming that participants used the prior probability distribution of features in natural scenes to judge subjective upright. Critically, our results reveal that participants also used natural image priors to inform their confidence judgements. Our findings provide important evidence supporting a Bayesian characterisation of confidence and highlight the influence of environmental priors on confidence.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions

West

A-Izzeddin

Harrison

2023

Preprint

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Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing

A-Izzeddin,

Rideaux,

Mattingley

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Humans display marked changes to their perceptual experience of a stimulus following prolonged or repeated exposure to a preceding stimulus. A well-studied example of such perceptual adaptation is the tilt-aftereffect. Here, prolonged exposure to one orientation leads to a shift in the perception of subsequent orientations. Such a capacity to adapt suggests the visual system is dynamically tuned to our current visual environment. However, it remains unclear to what extent adaptation occurs in response to systematic features in naturalistic scenes. We therefore investigated orientation adaptation in response to natural viewing of filtered live-action film stimuli. Within a session, participants freely viewed 45 minutes of a film which had been filtered to include increased contrast energy within a specified orientation band (0°, 45°, 90°, or 135°; i.e., the adaptor). To measure adaptation effects, the film was intermittently interrupted to have participants perform a simple orientation judgement task. Having participants complete behavioural trials throughout the testing session, including 45 minutes of total adaptation time, allowed investigation of the accumulation of response biases and changes in such biases over the course of the session. We found participants exhibited stronger adaptation effects in response to cardinal adaptors compared to obliques. However, overall adaptation effects were weaker than those observed under typical tilt-aftereffect paradigms. Further, within a single session, adaptation effects developed inconsistently. The current findings therefore demonstrate a resistance to adaptation in response to naturalistic viewing conditions, suggesting barriers to understanding perceptual adaptation as experienced in nature.

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The influence of natural image statistics on upright orientation judgements

Cited by 2 publications

References 76 publications

Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions

Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions

Investigating orientation adaptation following naturalistic film viewing

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