Abstract
When viewing ambiguous stimuli, people tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others. Such perceptual biases impose various types of constraints on visual perception, and accordingly, have been assumed to serve distinct adaptive functions. Here we demonstrated the interaction of two functionally distinct biases in bistable biological motion perception, one regulating perception based on the statistics of the environment – the viewing-from-above (VFA) bias, and the other with the potential to reduce costly errors resulting from perceptual inference – the facing-the-viewer (FTV) bias. When compatible, the two biases reinforced each other to enhance the bias strength and induced less perceptual reversals relative to when they were in conflict. Whereas in the conflicting condition, the biases competed with each other, with the dominant percept varying with visual cues that modulate the two biases separately in opposite directions. Crucially, the way the two biases interact does not depend on the dominant bias at the individual level, and cannot be accounted for by a single bias alone. These findings provide compelling evidence that humans robustly integrate biases with different adaptive functions in visual perception. It may be evolutionarily advantageous to dynamically reweight diverse biases in the sensory context to resolve perceptual ambiguity.
Highlights
When viewing ambiguous stimuli, people tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others
We demonstrated the interaction of two functionally distinct biases in bistable biological motion perception, one regulating perception based on the statistics of the environment – the viewing-from-above (VFA) bias, and the other with the potential to reduce costly errors resulting from perceptual inference – the facingthe-viewer (FTV) bias
We first set up a pilot experiment to check whether observers could experience the two possible interpretations of the PLW stimuli with large angle of elevation/depression (45°), because no previous studies have examined the perception of such stimuli. Another aim of this experiment was to explore whether interaction modes of the biases could influence the dynamics of perceptual reversals
Summary
People tend to perceive some interpretations more frequently than others Such perceptual biases impose various types of constraints on visual perception, and have been assumed to serve distinct adaptive functions. They tend to experience ambiguous lines[14], surfaces[15], Necker cubes[16,17,18] or biological motions[19] as viewing-from-above (VFA) at first glance, which is known as the VFA bias, due to the prior knowledge that objects most probably sit on surfaces below eye level Another category of perceptual biases is based on assumptions concerning the consequences of human behaviors. When two biases from different categories coexist, and each of the biases alone can enable us to resolve the ambiguity in the sensory input, does the brain rely on one bias while suppressing the other, or allow the two biases to interact? considering that perception www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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