Anomalous visual experience is linked to perceptual uncertainty and visual imagery vividness

Johannes H Salge,Reshanne R Reeder,Stefan Pollmann

doi:10.1007/s00426-020-01364-7

Abstract

An imbalance between top-down and bottom-up processing on perception (specifically, over-reliance on top-down processing) can lead to anomalous perception, such as illusions. One factor that may be involved in anomalous perception is visual mental imagery, which is the experience of “seeing” with the mind’s eye. There are vast individual differences in self-reported imagery vividness, and more vivid imagery is linked to a more sensory-like experience. We, therefore, hypothesized that susceptibility to anomalous perception is linked to individual imagery vividness. To investigate this, we adopted a paradigm that is known to elicit the perception of faces in pure visual noise (pareidolia). In four experiments, we explored how imagery vividness contributes to this experience under different response instructions and environments. We found strong evidence that people with more vivid imagery were more likely to see faces in the noise, although removing suggestive instructions weakened this relationship. Analyses from the first two experiments led us to explore confidence as another factor in pareidolia proneness. We, therefore, modulated environment noise and added a confidence rating in a novel design. We found strong evidence that pareidolia proneness is correlated with uncertainty about real percepts. Decreasing perceptual ambiguity abolished the relationship between pareidolia proneness and both imagery vividness and confidence. The results cannot be explained by incidental face-like patterns in the noise, individual variations in response bias, perceptual sensitivity, subjective perceptual thresholds, viewing distance, testing environments, motivation, gender, or prosopagnosia. This indicates a critical role of mental imagery vividness and perceptual uncertainty in anomalous perceptual experience.

Highlights

Perception is the mental interpretation of external sensory stimuli—an individualized experience that requires a delicate balance between top-down and bottom-up sources of information
Because most studies of anomalous perception rely on clinical samples, it is impossible to disentangle whether these experiences emerge from a predisposition, or develop comorbidly with pathology
We hypothesized that the extent to which an individual relies on mental imagery to inform perceptual decisions may be linked to individual imagery vividness

Summary

Introduction

Perception is the mental interpretation of external sensory stimuli—an individualized experience that requires a delicate balance between top-down (cognitive) and bottom-up (environmental) sources of information. Because most studies of anomalous perception rely on clinical samples, it is impossible to disentangle whether these experiences emerge from a predisposition (i.e., more vivid imagery prior to disorder), or develop comorbidly with pathology (i.e., more vivid imagery following the onset of a disorder). We, addressed this problem by investigating the link between imagery vividness and anomalous perception in a normative sample, prior to (or in the absence of) pathology. We hypothesized that the extent to which an individual relies on mental imagery to inform perceptual decisions (and the likelihood to commit a reality monitoring error) may be linked to individual imagery vividness. To test this hypothesis, we turned to pareidolia

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