Distribution of content in recently-viewed scenes whitens perception

Abstract

Anisotropies in visual perception have often been presumed to reflect an evolutionary adaptation to an environment with a particular anisotropy. Here, we adapt observers to globally-atypical environments presented in virtual reality to assess the malleability of this well-known perceptual anisotropy. Results showed that the typical bias in orientation perception was in fact altered as a result of recent experience. Application of Bayesian modeling indicates that these global changes of the recently-viewed environment implicate a Bayesian prior matched to the recently experienced environment. These results suggest that biases in orientation perception are fluid and predictable, and that humans adapt to orientation biases in their visual environment "on the fly" to optimize perceptual encoding of content in the recently-viewed visual world.

Mind-Craft: Exploring the Effect of Digital Visual Experience on Changes to Orientation Sensitivity in Visual Contour Perception

“…These results accord well with the recent work of Schweinhart et al. (2017), who exposed participants to anisotropic training content within a virtual reality system to induce a perceptual change similarly reflecting the properties of their training stimuli.…”

“…Eyetracking contour detection data from these participants were compared with data from control subjects who were instructed to limit exposure to screens for the same period of time. Schweinhart et al. (2017) demonstrated that the visual system is capable of adapting to anisotropic scene statistics but used unrealistic stimuli with respect to what exists in the real world.…”

“…Eyetracking contour detection data from these participants were compared with data from control subjects who were instructed to limit exposure to screens for the same period of time. Schweinhart et al (2017) demonstrated that the visual system is capable of adapting to anisotropic scene statistics but used unrealistic stimuli with respect to what exists in the real world. We took a complimentary approach in Experiment 2 using digital screen media exhibiting highly biased orientation information as our training stimuli-a necessary step toward demonstrating the ecological validity of Schweinhart et al's findings.…”

Dynamic properties of internal noise probed by modulating binocular rivalry

“…Dong and Atick, 1995;Field, 1987;Geisler, 2008;Hansen and Essock, 2005;427 Simoncelli and Olshausen, 2001). Our findings here imply that as well as having a preference 428 for external stimuli with naturalistic properties, the internal structure of the visual system 429 might itself have evolved to emulate these temporal constraints (Field, 1987;Haun and Peli, 430 2013; Schwartz and Simoncelli, 2001;Schweinhart et al, 2017). 431 432…”

Augmented Reality as a Tool for Studying Visual Plasticity: 2009 to 2018

“…More subtle manipulations of the environment have also been explored recently (Schweinhart et al, 2017). Natural images contain the most content around horizontal orientations, the second most around vertical orientations, and the least near oblique orientations (±45°).…”