Attractive effects of previous form information on heading estimation from optic flow occur at perceptual stage

Abstract

When moving in the environment, optic flow and form (e.g., motion streaks) information generally appear simultaneously. Previous studies have shown that observers can estimate their heading by integrating the simultaneously presented form and optic flow information. Recent work also found that the previously seen optic flow affected the current heading estimation. The current study conducted two experiments to explore whether and how the heading estimation from optic flow was affected by the previously seen form information. We found that the current heading estimates from optic flow were biased toward the location of the focus of expansion of the previously seen form stimulus, showing an attractive effect of the previous form. Additionally, the results revealed that the attractive effect of the previous form occurred at the perceptual stage rather than postperceptual stages (e.g., working memory). Our findings suggest that our visual system can integrate dynamic optic flow and static form information across the temporal domain to estimate our heading direction.

Effects of attention on the asymmetric serial dependences between form and motion patterns and their computational processes

“…Conversely, when the attentional load is on the previous feature, the serial dependence on the previous feature will decrease. These patterns have been found in several studies 9,10 , indicating a Bayesian inference process. However, no study has developed a Bayesian inference model to directly examine this proposal.…”

“…However, with the deepening of research, more and more researchers believe that the processing of one feature will be interfered by another feature. That is, the two types of visual features are integrated with each other [6][7][8][9][10][11] , which has been supported by many neurophysiological and brain-imaging studies [12][13][14][15] .…”

“…In addition to examining the integration of two features across the temporal domain, researchers also investigate the cognitive mechanisms involved in this integration. In the baseline condition of Wang et al (2022) 9 , participants were shown with a flow display and asked to estimate the flow FoE; in the perceptual condition, a form display was presented before the flow display and participants were asked to view the form display; in the memory-load condition, participants were asked to remember the form FoE and estimate it after estimating the flow FoE. The result showed the serial dependence sizes between the perceptual and memory load conditions were not significantly different.…”

“…They found that the estimate of the currently presented orientation was biased toward the previously seen orientation (also see [17][18][19] ). Inspired by their studies, Wang et al (2022) 9 alternatively showed participants form and flow displays in some conditions. The form display (Figure 1a) consisted of dot-pairs that converged at a position on the screen, forming a focus of expansion (i.e., form FoE).…”

Task feedback suggests a post-perceptual component to serial dependence

“…Serial dependence has been shown to bias perceptual templates used by the visual system to weigh the visual input according to task demands (Murai & Whitney, 2021), to operate on perception of features and integrated objects (Collins, 2021), in the integration of dynamic optic flow and static form information in estimates of heading direction (Wang et al, 2022), and to directly alter appearance of perceptual stimuli (Collins, 2020; Cicchini et al, 2017; Cicchini, et al, 2021; Manassi & Whitney, 2022). Other work using orientation judgment tasks has shown attractive serial dependence when past and previous stimuli were close in orientation (Cicchini et al, 2017).…”