Illusion of Visual Stability Through Active Perceptual Serial Dependence

Overview

Journal Sci Adv

Specialties Biology
Science

Date 2022 Jan 12

PMID 35020432

Authors

Mauro Manassi

David Whitney

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Despite a noisy and ever-changing visual world, our perceptual experience seems remarkably stable over time. How does our visual system achieve this apparent stability? Here, we introduce a previously unknown visual illusion that shows direct evidence for an online mechanism continuously smoothing our percepts over time. As a result, a continuously seen physically changing object can be misperceived as unchanging. We find that online object appearance is captured by past visual experience up to 15 seconds ago. We propose that, because of an underlying active mechanism of serial dependence, the representation of the object is continuously merged over time, and the consequence is an illusory stability in which object appearance is biased toward the past. Our results provide a direct demonstration of the link between serial dependence in visual representations and perceived visual stability in everyday life.

Citing Articles

Structural disorder facilitates future memory decisions.

Bocheva M Proc Biol Sci. 2024; 291(2034):20242154.

PMID: 39532138 PMC: 11557226. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2024.2154.

Individual differences reveal similarities in serial dependence effects across perceptual tasks, but not to oculomotor tasks.

Guan S, Goettker A J Vis. 2024; 24(12):2.

PMID: 39495187 PMC: 11542503. DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.12.2.

Sequential Effects in Reaching Reveal Efficient Coding in Motor Planning.

Wang T, Fang Y, Whitney D bioRxiv. 2024; .

PMID: 39416082 PMC: 11483078. DOI: 10.1101/2024.09.30.615975.

Positive serial dependence in ratings of food images for appeal and calories.

Alais D, Burr D, Carlson T Curr Biol. 2024; 34(21):5090-5096.e1.

PMID: 39362216 PMC: 11537180. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.09.012.

Characterizing serial dependence as an attraction to prior response.

Gallagher G, Benton C J Vis. 2024; 24(9):16.

PMID: 39325435 PMC: 11437684. DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.9.16.

References

Kiyonaga A, Scimeca J, Bliss D, Whitney D . Serial Dependence across Perception, Attention, and Memory. Trends Cogn Sci. 2017; 21(7):493-497. PMC: 5516910. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.04.011. View

Lueckmann J, Macke J, Nienborg H . Can Serial Dependencies in Choices and Neural Activity Explain Choice Probabilities?. J Neurosci. 2018; 38(14):3495-3506. PMC: 5895039. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2225-17.2018. View

Cicchini G, Anobile G, Burr D . Compressive mapping of number to space reflects dynamic encoding mechanisms, not static logarithmic transform. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014; 111(21):7867-72. PMC: 4040572. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1402785111. View

Bliss D, Sun J, DEsposito M . Serial dependence is absent at the time of perception but increases in visual working memory. Sci Rep. 2017; 7(1):14739. PMC: 5677003. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-15199-7. View

Liberman A, Fischer J, Whitney D . Serial dependence in the perception of faces. Curr Biol. 2014; 24(21):2569-74. PMC: 4254333. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.025. View

Turbett K, Palermo R, Bell J, Hanran-Smith D, Jeffery L . Serial dependence of facial identity reflects high-level face coding. Vision Res. 2021; 182:9-19. DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2021.01.004. View

Hollingworth A, Richard A, Luck S . Understanding the function of visual short-term memory: transsaccadic memory, object correspondence, and gaze correction. J Exp Psychol Gen. 2008; 137(1):163-81. PMC: 2784885. DOI: 10.1037/0096-3445.137.1.163. View

Barbosa J, Stein H, Martinez R, Galan-Gadea A, Li S, Dalmau J . Interplay between persistent activity and activity-silent dynamics in the prefrontal cortex underlies serial biases in working memory. Nat Neurosci. 2020; 23(8):1016-1024. PMC: 7392810. DOI: 10.1038/s41593-020-0644-4. View

Murai Y, Whitney D . Serial dependence revealed in history-dependent perceptual templates. Curr Biol. 2021; 31(14):3185-3191.e3. PMC: 8319107. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.05.006. View

10.

Haberman J, Harp T, Whitney D . Averaging facial expression over time. J Vis. 2010; 9(11):1.1-13. PMC: 2857387. DOI: 10.1167/9.11.1. View

11.

Schweinberger S, Zaske R, Walther C, Golle J, Kovacs G, Wiese H . Young without plastic surgery: perceptual adaptation to the age of female and male faces. Vision Res. 2010; 50(23):2570-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2010.08.017. View

12.

Fornaciai M, Park J . Spontaneous repulsive adaptation in the absence of attractive serial dependence. J Vis. 2019; 19(5):21. DOI: 10.1167/19.5.21. View

13.

ONeil S, Webster M . Adaptation and the perception of facial age. Vis cogn. 2012; 19(4):534-550. PMC: 3247904. DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2011.561262. View

14.

Fischer J, Whitney D . Serial dependence in visual perception. Nat Neurosci. 2014; 17(5):738-43. PMC: 4012025. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3689. View

15.

Manassi M, Liberman A, Kosovicheva A, Zhang K, Whitney D . Serial dependence in position occurs at the time of perception. Psychon Bull Rev. 2018; 25(6):2245-2253. DOI: 10.3758/s13423-018-1454-5. View

16.

McDermott J, Schemitsch M, Simoncelli E . Summary statistics in auditory perception. Nat Neurosci. 2013; 16(4):493-8. PMC: 4143328. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3347. View

17.

Mei G, Chen S, Dong B . Working Memory Maintenance Modulates Serial Dependence Effects of Perceived Emotional Expression. Front Psychol. 2019; 10:1610. PMC: 6637952. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01610. View

18.

Peirce J . Generating Stimuli for Neuroscience Using PsychoPy. Front Neuroinform. 2009; 2:10. PMC: 2636899. DOI: 10.3389/neuro.11.010.2008. View

19.

Yarrow K, Haggard P, Heal R, Brown P, Rothwell J . Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic perceptual continuity. Nature. 2001; 414(6861):302-5. DOI: 10.1038/35104551. View

20.

Lisi M, Cavanagh P . Dissociation between the Perceptual and Saccadic Localization of Moving Objects. Curr Biol. 2015; 25(19):2535-40. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.08.021. View