IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0258667.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Top-down resolution of visual ambiguity – knowledge from the future or footprints from the past?

Author

Listed:
  • Jürgen Kornmeier
  • Kriti Bhatia
  • Ellen Joos

Abstract

Current theories about visual perception assume that our perceptual system weights the a priori incomplete, noisy and ambiguous sensory information with previous, memorized perceptual experiences in order to construct stable and reliable percepts. These theories are supported by numerous experimental findings. Theories about precognition have an opposite point of view. They assume that information from the future can have influence on perception, thoughts, and behavior. Several experimental studies provide evidence for precognition effects, other studies found no such effects. One problem may be that the vast majority of precognition paradigms did not systematically control for potential effects from the perceptual history. In the present study, we presented ambiguous Necker cube stimuli and disambiguated cube variants and systematically tested in two separate experiments whether perception of a currently observed ambiguous Necker cube stimulus can be influenced by a disambiguated cube variant, presented in the immediate perceptual past (perceptual history effects) and/or in the immediate perceptual future (precognition effects). We found perceptual history effects, which partly depended on the length of the perceptual history trace but were independent of the perceptual future. Results from some individual participants suggest on the first glance a precognition pattern, but results from our second experiment make a perceptual history explanation more probable. On the group level, no precognition effects were statistically indicated. The perceptual history effects found in the present study are in confirmation with related studies from the literature. The precognition analysis revealed some interesting individual patterns, which however did not allow for general conclusions. Overall, the present study demonstrates that any future experiment about sensory or extrasensory perception urgently needs to control for potential perceptual history effects and that temporal aspects of stimulus presentation are of high relevance.

Suggested Citation

  • Jürgen Kornmeier & Kriti Bhatia & Ellen Joos, 2021. "Top-down resolution of visual ambiguity – knowledge from the future or footprints from the past?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(10), pages 1-29, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0258667
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0258667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258667
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0258667&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0258667?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claire Chambers & Sahar Akram & Vincent Adam & Claire Pelofi & Maneesh Sahani & Shihab Shamma & Daniel Pressnitzer, 2017. "Prior context in audition informs binding and shapes simple features," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 8(1), pages 1-11, April.
    2. Stanislas Dehaene & Lionel Naccache & Gurvan Le Clec'H & Etienne Koechlin & Michael Mueller & Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz & Pierre-FranÇois van de Moortele & Denis Le Bihan, 1998. "Imaging unconscious semantic priming," Nature, Nature, vol. 395(6702), pages 597-600, October.
    3. Robert Staadt & Sebastian T Philipp & Joschka L Cremers & Jürgen Kornmeier & Dirk Jancke, 2020. "Perception of the difference between past and present stimulus: A rare orientation illusion may indicate incidental access to prediction error-like signals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-15, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pablo Garaizar & Miguel A Vadillo & Diego López-de-Ipiña, 2014. "Presentation Accuracy of the Web Revisited: Animation Methods in the HTML5 Era," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(10), pages 1-19, October.
    2. Sheth, Jesal D., 2021. "Disclosure of information under competition: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 158-180.
    3. Ariel Goldstein & Ido Rivlin & Alon Goldstein & Yoni Pertzov & Ran R Hassin, 2020. "Predictions from masked motion with and without obstacles," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-35, November.
    4. Gaia Tavoni & David E Chen Kersen & Vijay Balasubramanian, 2021. "Cortical feedback and gating in odor discrimination and generalization," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(10), pages 1-35, October.
    5. Richard Morey & Jeffrey Rouder & Paul Speckman, 2009. "A Truncated-Probit Item Response Model for Estimating Psychophysical Thresholds," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 74(4), pages 603-618, December.
    6. Ellen Joos & Anne Giersch & Kriti Bhatia & Sven P Heinrich & Ludger Tebartz van Elst & Jürgen Kornmeier, 2020. "Using the perceptual past to predict the perceptual future influences the perceived present – A novel ERP paradigm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-35, September.
    7. Jesal Sheth, 2019. "Disclosure of information under competition: An experimental study," Discussion Papers 2019-04, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    8. Floris P de Lange & Simon van Gaal & Victor A F Lamme & Stanislas Dehaene, 2011. "How Awareness Changes the Relative Weights of Evidence During Human Decision-Making," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-10, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0258667. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.