Pupillary Responses Obey Emmert’s Law and Co-vary with Autistic Traits

Tortelli, Chiara; Turi, Marco; Burr, David; Binda, Paola

doi:10.1007/s10803-020-04718-7

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…This is not the first case where we find that pupillary responses are independent of physical luminance and yet inconsistent with perceptual judgments (Benedetto and Binda, 2016; Turi et al, 2018; Pome et al, 2020; Tortelli et al, 2020, 2021). These inconsistencies were generally explained by calling decisional factors into the picture, as these may bias or add variability to perceptual reports while leaving pupil size unaffected (Tortelli et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 66%

Attention cueing in rivalry: insights from pupillometry

Acquafredda

Binda

Lunghi

2021

Preprint

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We used pupillometry to evaluate the effects of attention cueing on perceptual bi-stability, as reported by adult human observers. Perceptual alternations and pupil diameter were measured during two forms of rivalry, generated by presenting a white and a black disk to the two eyes (binocular rivalry) or splitting the disks between eyes (interocular grouping rivalry). In line with previous studies, we found that subtle pupil size oscillations (about 0.05 mm) tracked alternations between exclusive dominance phases of the black or white disk. These oscillations were larger for perceptually stronger stimuli: presented to the dominant eye or with physically higher luminance contrast. However, cueing of endogenous attention to one of the rivaling percepts did not affect pupil oscillations during exclusive dominance phases. This was in spite of the reliable effects of endogenous attention on perceptual dominance, which shifted in favor of the cued percept by about 10%. The results were comparable for binocular and interocular grouping rivalry. Cueing only had a marginal modulatory effect on pupil size during mixed percepts in binocular rivalry. This may suggest that, rather than acting by modulating perceptual strength, endogenous attention primarily acts during periods of unresolved competition, which is compatible with attention being automatically directed to the rivaling stimuli during periods of exclusive dominance and thereby sustaining perceptual alternations.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 66%

Attention cueing in rivalry: insights from pupillometry

Acquafredda

Binda

Lunghi

2021

Preprint

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“…Our main time windows of interest lasted 500 ms (consistent with previous work [25, 74]) and started either at 2000 ms post-stimulus or at 500 ms post-response to capture the delayed peak in pupil responses (approximately 1000 ms) while ensuring pupil stabilization following luminance transitions (e.g., between the brighter stimulus screen and the darker grey response screen).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pupil dilation tracks with perceptual-decision uncertainty (Urai, Braun, & Donner, 2017;Joshi & Gold, 2020;Allen et al, 2016;Tortelli, Turi, Burr, & Binda, 2020;Satterthwaite et al, 2007;Zénon, 2019;Lempert, Chen, & Fleming, 2015) and depends on mechanisms separate from the instantiation of button presses. We thus used pupillometry as an objective physiological readout of intermediate processes to corroborate our interpretation of perceptual insight.…”

Section: Pupillometry Further Validates the Perceptual-insight Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introspective inference counteracts perceptual distortion

Mihali

Broeker

Horga

2021

Preprint

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Introspective agents can recognize the extent to which their internal perceptual experiences deviate from the actual states of the external world. This ability, also known as insight, is critically required for reality testing and is impaired in psychosis, yet very little is known about its cognitive underpinnings. We developed a Bayesian modeling framework and a novel psychophysics paradigm to quantitatively characterize this type of insight while participants experienced a motion-aftereffect illusion. Participants could compensate for the illusion when judging the actual direction of a motion stimulus. Furthermore, confidence, reaction-time, and pupil-dilation data all showed signatures consistent with inferential adjustments in the Bayesian insight model. Our results suggest that people can question what they see and make insightful inferences that incorporate introspective knowledge about internal distortions.

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“…Previous reports of reliable associations between pupillometry results and inter-individual differences in perceptual styles [47][48][49][50] motivated us to investigate the relationship between the effects of contextual information on pupillary responses and autistic-like traits measured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient…”

Section: Contextual Pupil Response and Autistic Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These results show that pupillary constriction typically re ects the interpretation of light in a scene, not just the amount of physical energy entering the eye, suggesting that pupillary responses can be informative about an individual's perception. Indeed, pupillometry has been shown to track inter-individual differences in perception, and it may even be more reliable than behavioral measures and other physiological responses [47][48][49][50].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextual Information Modulates Pupil Size in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children.

Tortelli¹,

Pomè²,

Turi³

et al. 2021

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Background. Recent Bayesian models suggest that perception is more “data-driven” and less dependent on contextual information in autistic individuals than others. However, experimental tests of this hypothesis have given mixed results, possibly due to the lack of objectivity of the self-report methods typically employed. Here we introduce an objective no-report paradigm based on pupillometry to assess the processing of contextual information in autistic children and a comparison clinical group.Methods. After validating (in a group of neurotypical adults) a child-friendly pupillometric paradigm, in which we embedded test images within an animation movie that participants watched passively, we compared pupillary response to images of the sun and meaningless control images in children with autism versus age- and IQ-matched children presenting developmental disorders unrelated to the autistic spectrum. Results. Both clinical groups showed stronger pupillary constriction for the sun images compared with control images, like the neurotypical adults. There was no detectable difference between autistic children and the comparison group (in spite of a significant difference in pupillary light responses, enhanced in the autistic group). Limitations: Having found no statistically significant differences between groups, we cannot exclude that group differences existed but were too small to be detected – a critique that applies to most negative findings. Additional limitations concern the heterogeneous composition of the comparison group and the types of stimuli tested, which only allowed for studying the effect of context on relatively complex perceptual processes. Conclusions: Our report introduces an objective technique for studying perception in clinical samples and children. The lack of statistically significant group differences in our tests suggests that autistic children and the comparison group do not show large differences in perception of these stimuli. This opens the way to further studies testing contextual processing at other levels of perception.

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Pupillary Responses Obey Emmert’s Law and Co-vary with Autistic Traits

Cited by 10 publications

References 92 publications

Attention cueing in rivalry: insights from pupillometry

Attention cueing in rivalry: insights from pupillometry

Introspective inference counteracts perceptual distortion

Contextual Information Modulates Pupil Size in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children.

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