Congruency Bias Research Articles

Ordinal information, but not metric information, matters in binding feature with depth location in three-dimensional contexts.

A basic function of human visual perception is the ability to recognize and locate objects in the environment. It has been shown that two-dimensional (2D) location can reliably bias judgments on object identity (spatial congruency bias; Golomb et al., 2014), suggesting that 2D location information is automatically bound with object features to induce such a bias. Although the binding problem of feature and location has been vigorously studied under various 2D settings, it remains unclear how depth location can be bound with object features in a three-dimensional (3D) setting. Here we conducted five experiments in various 3D contexts using the congruency bias paradigm, and found that changes of object's depth location could influence perceptual judgments on object features differently depending on whether its relative depth order with respect to others changed or not. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the judgments on an object's color could be affected by changes in its ordinal depth, but not by changes in its absolute metric depth. Experiment 3 showed that the bias was asymmetric-changes in an object's color did bias the judgments on metric-depth location, but not if its depth order had changed. Experiments 4 and 5 investigated whether these findings could be generalized to a peripersonal near space and a large-scale far space, respectively, using more ecological virtual environments. Our findings suggest that ordinal depth plays a special role in feature-location binding: an object may be automatically bound with its relative depth relation, but not with its absolute metric-depth location. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Dynamic saccade context triggers more stable object-location binding.

Our visual systems rapidly perceive and integrate information about object identities and locations. There is long-standing debate about if and how we achieve world-centered (spatiotopic) object representations across eye movements, with many studies reporting persistent retinotopic (eye-centered) effects even for higher level object-location binding. But these studies are generally conducted in fairly static experimental contexts. Might spatiotopic object-location binding only emerge in more dynamic saccade contexts? In the present study, we investigated this using the spatial congruency bias paradigm in healthy adults. In the static (single-saccade) context, we found purely retinotopic binding, as before. However, robust spatiotopic binding emerged in the dynamic saccade context (multiple frequent saccades and saccades during stimulus presentation). We further isolated specific factors that modulate retinotopic and spatiotopic binding. Our results provide strong evidence that dynamic saccade context can trigger more stable object-location binding in ecologically relevant spatiotopic coordinates, perhaps via a more flexible brain state that accommodates improved visual stability in the dynamic world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Variable, sometimes absent, but never negative: Applying multilevel models of variability to the backward crosstalk effect to find theoretical constraints

When performing two tasks at the same time, the congruency of the second task's features influences performance in the first task. This is called the backward crosstalk effect (BCE), a phenomenon that influences both theories of binding and of dual-task capacity limitations. The question of whether the BCE is found in all participants at all times is relevant for understanding the basis of the effect. For example, if the BCE is based on strategic choices, it can be variable, but if it is automatic and involuntary, it should never vary in whether it is present or not. Variability in observed BCE sizes was already documented and discussed when the group average effect was first reported (Hommel, 1998). Yet the theories discussed at the time did not motivate a more direct analysis of this variability, nor did the readily available statistical tools permit it.Some statistical approaches recently applied in cognitive psychology allow such a variability-focused analysis and some more recent theoretical debates would benefit from this as well. We assessed the variability of the BCE as well as a BCE-like free-choice congruency effect by applying a Bayesian multilevel modeling approach to the data from a dual-tasking experiment. Trials consisted of a two- and a four-response task. We manipulated which task was presented first and whether the response to the four-choice task was free or forced choice.RT data were best predicted by a model in which the BCE is zero in part of the population and drawn from a normal distribution truncated at zero (and thus always positive) in the rest of the population. Choice congruency bias data were best predicted by a model assuming this effect to be drawn from a normal distribution truncated at zero (but, in contrast to the RT data, without the subset of the population where it is zero).The BCE is not an inflexible and universal phenomenon that is directly linked to an inherent structural trait of human cognition. We discuss theoretical constraints implied by these results with a focus on what we can infer about the traits of the factors that influence BCE size. We suggest that future research might add further major constraints by using multi-session experiments to distinguish between-person and within-person variability. Our results show that the BCE is variable. The next step is understanding along which axes it is variable and why it varies.

The development of visual cognition: The emergence of spatial congruency bias

AbstractIn adults, spatial location plays a special role in visual object processing. People are more likely to judge two sequentially presented objects as being identical when they appear in the same location compared to in different locations (a phenomenon referred to as Spatial Congruency Bias [SCB]). However, no comparable Identity Congruency Bias (ICB) is found, suggesting an asymmetric location‐identity relationship in object binding. What gives rise to this asymmetric congruency bias? This paper considered two possible hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 suggests that the asymmetric congruency bias results from an inherently special role of location in the visual system. In contrast, Hypothesis 2 suggests that the asymmetric congruency bias is a product of development, reflecting people's experience with the world. To distinguish the two hypotheses, we tested both adults’ and 5‐year‐old children's SCB and ICB by Identity Judgment Experiments and Spatial Judgment Experiments, respectively. The study found that adults only exhibited a SCB, but no ICB. However, young children exhibited both SCB and ICB, suggesting a symmetric congruency bias and reciprocal influences between location and identity in early development. The results indicate that the asymmetric location‐identity relationship develops as object identity's influence on location gets pruned away, while location's influence on identity is preserved, possibly due to people's gained experiences with regularities of the world.Research Highlights Adults exhibit Spatial Congruency Bias—an asymmetric location‐identity relationship with location biasing their judgment of object identities, but not vice versa. Asymmetric congruency bias may result from an inherently special role of location in visual system (Hypothesis 1) or accumulated experiences with the world (Hypothesis 2). To distinguish the two hypotheses, the study investigated the Spatial Congruency Bias and Identity Congruency Bias in both adults and 5‐year‐old children. Unlike adults who exhibited only Spatial Congruency Bias, 5‐year‐old children exhibited both Spatial Congruency Bias and Identity Congruency Bias.

Texture congruence modulates perceptual bias but not sensitivity to visuotactile stimulation during the rubber hand illusion.

The sense of body ownership is the feeling that one's body belongs to oneself. To study body ownership, researchers use bodily illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion (RHI), which involves experiencing a visible rubber hand as part of one's body when the rubber hand is stroked simultaneously with the hidden real hand. The RHI is based on a combination of vision, touch, and proprioceptive information following the principles of multisensory integration. It has been posited that texture incongruence between rubber hand and real hand weakens the RHI, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. To investigate this, we recently developed a novel psychophysical RHI paradigm. Based on fitting psychometric functions, we discovered the RHI resulted in shifts in the point of subjective equality when the rubber hand and the real hand were stroked with matching materials. We analysed these datasets further by using signal detection theory analysis, which distinguishes between the participants' sensitivity to visuotactile stimulation and the associated perceptual bias. We found that texture incongruence influences the RHI's perceptual bias but not its sensitivity to visuotactile stimulation. We observed that the texture congruence bias effect was the strongest in shorter visuotactile asynchronies (50-100 ms) and weaker in longer asynchronies (200 ms). These results suggest texture-related perceptual bias is most prominent when the illusion's sensitivity is at its lowest. Our findings shed light on the intricate interactions between top-down and bottom-up processes in body ownership, the links between body ownership and multisensory integration, and the impact of texture congruence on the RHI.

Aging attenuates the memory advantage for unexpected objects in real-world scenes

Across the adult lifespan memory processes are subject to pronounced changes. Prior knowledge and expectations might critically shape functional differences; however, corresponding findings have remained ambiguous so far. Here, we chose a tailored approach to scrutinize how schema (in-)congruencies affect older and younger adults’ memory for objects embedded in real-world scenes, a scenario close to everyday life memory demands. A sample of 23 older (52–81 years) and 23 younger adults (18–38 years) freely viewed 60 photographs of scenes in which target objects were included that were either congruent or incongruent with the given context information. After a delay, recognition performance for those objects was determined. In addition, recognized objects had to be matched to the scene context in which they were previously presented. While we found schema violations beneficial for object recognition across age groups, the advantage was significantly less pronounced in older adults. We moreover observed an age-related congruency bias for matching objects to their original scene context. Our findings support a critical role of predictive processes for age-related memory differences and indicate enhanced weighting of predictions with age. We suggest that recent predictive processing theories provide a particularly useful framework to elaborate on age-related functional vulnerabilities as well as stability.

The dominance of spatial information in object identity judgments: A persistent congruency bias even amidst conflicting statistical regularities.

Previous studies have posited that spatial location plays a special role in object recognition. Notably, the "spatial congruency bias (SCB)" is a tendency to report objects as the same identity if they are presented at the same location, compared to different locations. Here we found that even when statistical regularities were manipulated in the opposite direction (objects in the same location were three times more likely to be different identities), subjects still exhibited a robust SCB (more likely to report them as the same identity). We replicated this finding across two preregistered experiments. Only in a third experiment where we explicitly informed subjects of the manipulation did the SCB disappear, though the lack of a significantly reversed bias suggests the ingrained congruency bias was not completely overcome. The inclusion of catch trials where the second object was completely masked further bolsters previous evidence that the congruency bias is perceptual, not simply a guessing strategy. These results reinforce the dominant role of spatial information during object recognition and present the SCB as a strong perceptual phenomenon that is incredibly hard to overcome even in the face of opposing regularities and explicit instruction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Context congruence: How associative learning modulates cultural evolution.

The adoption of cultural variants by learners is affected by multiple factors including the prestige of the model and the value and frequency of different variants. However, little is known about what affects onward cultural transmission, or the choice of variants that models produce to pass on to new learners. This study investigated the effects on this choice of congruence between two contexts: the one in which variants are learned and the one in which they are later transmitted on. We hypothesized that when we are placed in a particular context, we will be more likely to produce (and therefore transmit) variants that we learned in that same (congruent) context. In particular, we tested the effect of a social contextual aspect-the relationship between model and learner. Our participants learned two methods to solve a puzzle, a variant from an "expert" (in an expert-to-novice context) and another one from a "peer" (in a peer-to-peer context). They were then asked to transmit one method onward, either to a "novice" (in a new expert-to-novice context) or to another "peer" (in a new peer-to-peer context). Participants were, overall, more likely to transmit the variant learned from an expert, evidencing an effect of by prestige bias. Crucially, in support of our hypothesis, they were also more likely to transmit the variant they had learned in the congruent context. Parameter estimation computer simulations of the experiment revealed that congruence bias was stronger than prestige bias.

The influence of background scenes on spatial congruency bias

The influence of background scenes on spatial congruency bias

Spatial Congruency Bias in Facial Identification and Expression Judgment: An Online Experiment

Spatial Congruency Bias in Facial Identification and Expression Judgment: An Online Experiment

Investigating the Spatial Congruency Bias: The privileged role of location in visual processing is a product of development

Investigating the Spatial Congruency Bias: The privileged role of location in visual processing is a product of development

A triple whammy effect of employees' gender, job type, and service outcomes on consumer behavior

The extant literature reports inconsistent results regarding the effect of employee gender on customers' attitudes and behaviors. Furthermore, the previous research on congruency bias has mainly focused on female-dominant jobs. To address these issues, this study examined how customers' gender stereotypes affect their service evaluations and revisit intentions. Grounded in role congruity theory, congruency bias, and justification-suppression models, the results showed that employee gender and gender congruency with the norm for the job have differential impacts on customer evaluations. Furthermore, this study found asymmetric impacts of congruency bias on customer experiences. For example, customers showed lower satisfaction and revisit intention when female employees failed in a male-dominant job than when their male counterparts did. However, they showed equal levels of satisfaction and revisit intention when male and female employees failed in a female-dominant job. The results provide important insights into how to reduce customers' gender bias toward different gender-dominated jobs.

Both feature comparisons and location comparisons are subject to bias.

Four experiments explore the generalizability of two different types of bias in visual comparison. The first type is a spatial congruency bias, in which two target stimuli are more likely to be classified as matching ('same') if they appear successively at the same location. The second type is an analytic bias, which varies depending on the overall similarity of the displays and the need to select specific parts from each object. Both types of bias had previously been demonstrated in comparisons based on shape and other visual features. The current tasks move beyond feature comparisons, requiring the comparison of the local positions of visual elements (dots or letters) that appear within each pattern. Given the privileged role of location in visual representations and attentional selection, it is important to test how visual comparisons of location differ from comparisons of shape and other features. The spatial congruency bias is replicated in the comparison of local positions and, as in previous experiments, its strength diminishes when the displays being compared are less similar to one another. Also, as demonstrated previously with letter comparisons, there is an analytic bias shifting responses toward 'different' when the displays being compared are less similar to one another. Responses are also shifted more toward 'same' in location comparisons relative to feature comparisons. The general pattern of results suggests that as more attentional selection is required in a comparison task, there is a stronger overall bias to respond 'different'.

The influence of spatial location on same-different judgments of facial identity and expression.

The "spatial congruency bias" is a behavioral phenomenon where 2 objects presented sequentially are more likely to be judged as being the same object if they are presented in the same location (Golomb, Kupitz, & Thiemann, 2014), suggesting that irrelevant spatial location information may be bound to object representations. Here, we examine whether the spatial congruency bias extends to higher-level object judgments of facial identity and expression. On each trial, 2 real-world faces were sequentially presented in variable screen locations, and subjects were asked to make same-different judgments on the facial expression (Experiments 1-2) or facial identity (Experiment 3) of the stimuli. We observed a robust spatial congruency bias for judgments of facial identity, yet a more fragile one for judgments of facial expression. Subjects were more likely to judge 2 faces as displaying the same expression if they were presented in the same location (compared to in different locations), but only when the faces shared the same identity. On the other hand, a spatial congruency bias was found when subjects made judgments on facial identity, even across faces displaying different facial expressions. These findings suggest a possible difference between the binding of facial identity and facial expression to spatial location. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial congruency bias in identifying objects is triggered by retinal position congruence: Examination using the Ternus-Pikler illusion

When two different objects are sequentially presented at the same location, the viewer tends to misjudge them as identical (spatial congruency bias). The present study examined whether the spatial congruency bias would involve not only retinotopic but also non-retinotopic processing using the Ternus-Pikler illusion. In the experiments, two objects (central and peripheral) appeared in an initial frame. The target object was presented in the central area of the display, while the peripheral object was either on the left or right side of the target object. In the second frame, the target object was again presented in the central area, and the peripheral object was on the opposite side. Two kinds of inter-stimulus intervals were used. In the no-blank condition, the target object was perceived as stationary, and the peripheral object appeared to move to the opposite side. However, in the long-blank condition, the two objects were perceived to move together. Participants judged whether the target objects in the two frames were identical. As a result, the spatial congruency bias occurred irrespective of the ISI conditions. Our findings suggest that the spatial congruency bias is mainly based on retinotopic processing.

The dominance of spatial information in location judgments: A persistent congruency bias even amidst conflicting statistical regularities

The dominance of spatial information in location judgments: A persistent congruency bias even amidst conflicting statistical regularities

Two kinds of bias in visual comparison illustrate the role of location and holistic/analytic processing differences.

A number of studies have shown that two stimuli appearing successively at the same spatial location are more likely to be perceived as the same, even though location is irrelevant to the task. This bias to respond "same" when stimuli are at the same location is termed spatial congruency bias. The experiments reported here demonstrate that the spatial congruency bias extends to letter strings: Participants tend to respond "same" when comparing two strings appearing successively at the same location. This bias may arise because successive stimuli at the same location are more likely to be perceived as a single object. Bias is also affected by the nature of the comparison task. We show that if letters must be compared individually (analytical comparison), there is a bias to respond "different," but if letter strings are compared as unified wholes (holistic comparison), there is no bias or a bias to respond "same." This analytical bias is apparently separate from the spatial congruency bias. It appears whether the task requires localization of differences between strings, or counting the number of differences, or ignoring differences in some parts of the stimuli while attending to others. All of these analytical comparison tasks require that letters be selected individually, and the analytical bias may reflect difficulty in preventing interference from neighboring letters in this selection process. Each type of bias reflects a different aspect of visual processing, and both can be measured to probe how processing changes across different tasks.

2D location biases depth-from-disparity judgments but not vice versa

ABSTRACTVisual cognition in our 3D world requires understanding how we accurately localize objects in 2D and depth, and what influence both types of location information have on visual processing. Spatial location is known to play a special role in visual processing, but most of these findings have focused on the special role of 2D location. One such phenomena is the spatial congruency bias, where 2D location biases judgments of object features but features do not bias location judgments. This paradigm has recently been used to compare different types of location information in terms of how much they bias different types of features. Here we used this paradigm to ask a related question: whether 2D and depth-from-disparity location bias localization judgments for each other. We found that presenting two objects in the same 2D location biased position-in-depth judgments, but presenting two objects at the same depth (disparity) did not bias 2D location judgments. We conclude that an object’s 2D location may be automatically incorporated into perception of its depth location, but not vice versa, which is consistent with a fundamentally special role for 2D location in visual processing.

Binding object features to locations: Does the “spatial congruency bias” update with object movement?

One of the fundamental challenges of visual cognition is how our visual systems combine information about an object's features with its spatial location. A recent phenomenon related to object-location binding, the "spatial congruency bias," revealed that two objects are more likely to be perceived as having the same identity or features if they appear in the same spatial location, versus if the second object appears in a different location. The spatial congruency bias suggests that irrelevant location information is automatically encoded with and bound to other object properties, biasing perceptual judgments. Here we further explored this new phenomenon and its role in object-location binding by asking what happens when an object moves to a new location: Is the spatial congruency bias sensitive to spatiotemporal contiguity cues, or does it remain linked to the original object location? Across four experiments, we found that the spatial congruency bias remained strongly linked to the original object location. However, under certain circumstances-for instance, when the first object paused and remained visible for a brief time after the movement-the congruency bias was found at both the original location and the updated location. These data suggest that the spatial congruency bias is based more on low-level visual information than on spatiotemporal contiguity cues, and reflects a type of object-location binding that is primarily tied to the original object location and that may only update to the object's new location if there is time for the features to be re-encoded and rebound following the movement.

Object-location binding across a saccade: A retinotopic spatial congruency bias.

Despite frequent eye movements that rapidly shift the locations of objects on our retinas, our visual system creates a stable perception of the world. To do this, it must convert eye-centered (retinotopic) input to world-centered (spatiotopic) percepts. Moreover, for successful behavior we must also incorporate information about object features/identities during this updating - a fundamental challenge that remains to be understood. Here we adapted a recent behavioral paradigm, the "spatial congruency bias," to investigate object-location binding across an eye movement. In two initial baseline experiments, we showed that the spatial congruency bias was present for both gabor and face stimuli in addition to the object stimuli used in the original paradigm. Then, across three main experiments, we found the bias was preserved across an eye movement, but only in retinotopic coordinates: Subjects were more likely to perceive two stimuli as having the same features/identity when they were presented in the same retinotopic location. Strikingly, there was no evidence of location binding in the more ecologically relevant spatiotopic (world-centered) coordinates; the reference frame did not update to spatiotopic even at longer post-saccade delays, nor did it transition to spatiotopic with more complex stimuli (gabors, shapes, and faces all showed a retinotopic congruency bias). Our results suggest that object-location binding may be tied to retinotopic coordinates, and that it may need to be re-established following each eye movement rather than being automatically updated to spatiotopic coordinates.