Positive and negative hysteresis effects for the perception of geometric and emotional ambiguities

Abstract

AimThe present study utilizes perceptual hysteresis effects to compare the ambiguity of Mona Lisa’s emotional face expression (high-level ambiguity) and of geometric cube stimuli (low-level ambiguity).MethodsIn two experiments we presented series of nine Mona Lisa variants and nine cube variants. Stimulus ambiguity was manipulated by changing Mona Lisa’s mouth curvature (Exp. 1) and the cubes’ back-layer luminance (Exp. 2). Each experiment consisted of three conditions, two with opposite stimulus presentation sequences with increasing and decreasing degrees of ambiguity, respectively, and a third condition with a random presentation sequence. Participants indicated happy or sad face percepts (Exp. 1) and alternative 3D cube percepts (Exp. 2) by key presses. We studied the influences of a priori perceptual biases (long-term memory) and presentation order (short-term memory) on perception.ResultsPerception followed sigmoidal functions of the stimulus ambiguity morphing parameters. The morphing parameter for the functions’ inflection points depended strongly on stimulus presentation order with similar effect sizes but different signs for the two stimulus types (positive hysteresis / priming for the cubes; negative hysteresis / adaptation for Mona Lisa). In the random conditions, the inflection points were located in the middle between those from the two directional conditions for the Mona Lisa stimuli. For the cube stimuli, they were superimposed on one sigmoidal function for the ordered condition.DiscussionThe hysteresis effects reflect the influence of short-term memory during the perceptual disambiguation of ambiguous sensory information. The effects for the two stimulus types are of similar size, explaining up to 34% of the perceptual variance introduced by the paradigm. We explain the qualitative difference between positive and negative hysteresis with adaptation for Mona Lisa and with priming for the cubes. In addition, the hysteresis paradigm allows a quantitative determination of the impact of adaptation and priming during the resolution of perceptual ambiguities. The asymmetric shifts of inflection points in the case of the cube stimuli is likely due to an a priori perceptual bias, reflecting an influence of long-term memory. Whether corresponding influences also exist for the Mona Lisa variants is so far unclear.

How positive emotional content overrules perceptual history effects: Hysteresis in emotion recognition

“…The perceptual switch when traveling from the source emotion toward the target emotion occurred later than in the opposite direction. This positive lag signature is one of the two variants of the hysteresis phenomenon and the most broadly studied in the field of visual perception (Webster et al, 2004;Pisarchik et al, 2014;Liaci et al, 2018). Importantly, our results revealed perceptual hysteresis between emotions widely spread in the emotional space.…”

“…The participants' perceptions of the dynamic emotional transitions tested here were found to be dependent on the direction of stimulation, thereby revealing perceptual hysteresis. Earlier reports in emotion perception have shown short-term memory effects (Kobayashi & Hara, 1993;Sacharin et al, 2012;Liaci et al, 2018;Witthoft et al, 2018;Mei, Chen, & Dong, 2019). However, most of the previous studies have mainly focused on extreme comparisons between emotional expression apexes, disregarding the dimensions within the space of emotions and hysteresis (Young et al, 1997).…”

“…When comparing the transition point between two perceptual states based on opposite trajectories, positive hysteresis (or simply hysteresis, as many authors choose to refer to it) occurs when the switch value between two states is higher for ascending than for descending variations of the input variable. It has been related to memory (persistence) mechanisms due to recent perceptual experience (Kleinschmidt et al, 2002;Hock & Schöner, 2010;Sacharin et al, 2012;Liaci, Fischer, Atmanspacher, Heinrichs, Tebartz van Else, & Kornmeijer, 2018). Negative hysteresis describes the opposite case and has been related to adaptation/habituation mechanisms that lead to earlier switches (Webster, Kaping, Mizokami, & Duhamel, 2004;Pisarchik, Jaimes-Reátegui, Magallón-García, & Castillo-Morales, 2014;Liaci et al, 2018).…”

“…The authors demonstrated that when observing dynamically changing facial expressions, perception was dependent on the direction of the change. More recently, hysteresis has been described in the interpretation of dynamic transitions between happiness and sadness (Liaci et al, 2018;Witthoft et al, 2018) and between anger and disgust (Sacharin et al, 2012). Early research on the perception of emotional facial expressions supported by the basic theory of emotion processing mainly focused on the use of static stimuli with direct comparisons between extreme emotion expression apexes (Barrett et al, 2007;Witherington & Crichton, 2007).…”

How odor cues help to optimize learning during sleep in a real life-setting

“…Our memories allow us to know what to do within the next hour, the next day or even the next year; in other words, to make plans about the future based on memorized past experiences. Memory allows us to understand language, thus to communicate with people, to draw causal relations and to adequately disambiguate and interpret the incomplete and noisy information available to our senses [1][2][3][4] . Further, (episodic) memories of our personal experiences strongly influence our personalities (e.g.…”