Cross-modal auditory priors drive the perception of bistable visual stimuli with reliable differences between individuals

Abstract

It is a widely held assumption that the brain performs perceptual inference by combining sensory information with prior expectations, weighted by their uncertainty. A distinction can be made between higher- and lower-level priors, which can be manipulated with associative learning and sensory priming, respectively. Here, we simultaneously investigate priming and the differential effect of auditory vs. visual associative cues on visual perception, and we also examine the reliability of individual differences. Healthy individuals (N = 29) performed a perceptual inference task twice with a one-week delay. They reported the perceived direction of motion of dot pairs, which were preceded by a probabilistic visuo-acoustic cue. In 30% of the trials, motion direction was ambiguous, and in half of these trials, the auditory versus the visual cue predicted opposing directions. Cue-stimulus contingency could change every 40 trials. On ambiguous trials where the visual and the auditory cue predicted conflicting directions of motion, participants made more decisions consistent with the prediction of the acoustic cue. Increased predictive processing under stimulus uncertainty was indicated by slower responses to ambiguous (vs. non-ambiguous) stimuli. Furthermore, priming effects were also observed in that perception of ambiguous stimuli was influenced by perceptual decisions on the previous ambiguous and unambiguous trials as well. Critically, behavioural effects had substantial inter-individual variability which showed high test–retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) > 0.78). Overall, higher-level priors based on auditory (vs. visual) information had greater influence on visual perception, and lower-level priors were also in action. Importantly, we observed large and stable differences in various aspects of task performance. Computational modelling combined with neuroimaging could allow testing hypotheses regarding the potential mechanisms causing these behavioral effects. The reliability of the behavioural differences implicates that such perceptual inference tasks could be valuable tools during large-scale biomarker and neuroimaging studies.

Positive schizotypy is associated with amplified mnemonic discrimination and attenuated generalization

“… 1 We note that individuals who were invited to participate in the study as part of the oversampling completed the short O-LIFE questionnaire again during the lab testing session, as it was not possible to connect their scores from the oversampling form with their lab test data. Some participants in the high schizotypy subsample obtained less than 7 points on the Unusual Experiences subscale—such a change in observed scores is in line with the test-retest reliability of the subscale [ 35 – 37 ], Still, the mean score of the Unusual Experiences subscale was remarkably high in this group, as compared to the convenience sample. …”

Temporal Stability of Bayesian Belief Updating in Perceptual Decision Making

“…Importantly, the reliability of the precision weighting of prior to likelihood information in this study (ICC2 = 0.75, 95%CI [0.56, 0.87]) is comparable to similar performance-based indicators of perceptual inference in other task designs. For example, a recent study investigated the influence of cross-modal auditory priors in the perception of bistable visual stimuli, revealing high temporal stability in individual differences of perceptual inference (median ICC = 0.83, 95%CI [0.61, 0.95]; Pálffy et al, 2021). Similarly, behavioural measures of cognitive flexibility in a probabilistic reversal learning task were also found to have excellent reliability (derived from mixed-effects models over two testing sessions; Waltmann et al, 2022).…”

“…We aimed to recruit at least 30 participants, based on the number of healthy participants recruited in previous coin task paradigms (Randeniya et al, 2021;Trapp & Vilares, 2020;Vilares et al, 2012;Vilares & Kording, 2017) and based on similar test re-test studies investigating individual differences in perceptual inference (Pálffy et al, 2021;Waltmann et al, 2022). To account for potential dropout and exclusion, we initially recruited 62 participants who completed the first testing session.…”

“…Behavioural and computational measures of a probabilistic reversal learning task also demonstrated high reliability (Waltmann et al, 2022), validating its interpretability of individual differences in cognitive flexibility, as well as deviances across psychiatric populations in a transdiagnostic manner. Of relevance to the predictive coding framework, a recent study investigated the test re-test reliability in individuals' cross modal usage of priors in the perception of bistable visual stimuli (Pálffy et al, 2021). This paradigm adjudicated between individuals' reliance TEMPORAL STABILITY OF BAYESIAN BELIEF UPDATING 4 on auditory versus visual associative cues in visual perception.…”