Serial dependence in emotion perception mirrors the autocorrelations in natural emotion statistics

Ortega, Jefferson; Chen, Zhimin; Whitney, David

doi:10.1167/jov.23.3.12

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 67 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Serial dependence also occurs at the level of global information where elements are combined into ensemble objects 29 and may occur separately for individual objects in a multi-object scene 37,43 . It is also a real world-effect: when realistic movie clips are used, current perception of objects is biased by information presented up to 15 seconds earlier 44 and current emotion is biased for up to 12 seconds 45 . These findings suggest that food serial dependence is likely to occur in real-world contexts containing multiple food options and future work could test this.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive serial dependence in ratings of food images for appeal and calories

Alais,

Carlson

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food is fundamental to survival and our brains are highly attuned to rapidly process food stimuli. Neural signals show foods can be discriminated as edible or inedible as early as 85 ms after stimulus onset1, distinguished as processed or unprocessed beginning at 130 ms2 and as high or low density from 165 ms3. Recent evidence revealed specialised processing of food stimuli in the ventral visual pathway4-6, an area that underlies perception of faces and other important objects. For many visual objects, present perception can be biased towards recent perceptual history (known as serial dependence7,8). We examined serial dependence for food in two large samples (n>300) that rated sequences of food images for either "appeal" or "calories". Calorie ratings by males and females agreed closely but appeal ratings were higher in males. High calorie ratings were associated with high appeal, especially in males. Serial analyses testing if current trial ratings were influenced by the previous one showed both appeal and calorie ratings exhibited clear positive dependences (i.e., a high preceding rating increased current trial ratings). The serial effect for appeal was roughly twice that for calories and males showed a greater serial effect than females for both ratings. Serial amplitude was larger in those who reported a longer elapsed time since they last ate and was larger in the BMI>25 group compared to BMI<25. These findings square with recently found food selectively in visual temporal cortex, reveal a new mechanism influencing food decision-making and suggest a new sensory-level component that could complement cognitive strategies in diet intervention.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive serial dependence in ratings of food images for appeal and calories

Alais,

Carlson

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Recent literature has outlined four key characteristics that must be met for serial dependence to occur [21]. First, serial dependence is temporally tuned, as the effect reaches back in time only by a few tens of seconds [1,3,10,21,22]; for instance, there are indications that the attractive bias lasts for about 15 s for orientation [3] and 12 s for perceived emotions [22]. Second, it is feature-tuned, meaning that only similar sequential properties generate the effect [1,3,6,10,23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual continuum in non-human animals: serial dependence revealed in dogs

Lõoke,

Guérineau,

Broseghini

et al. 2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Serial dependence is a recently described phenomenon by which the perceptual evaluation of a stimulus is biased by a previously attended one. By integrating stimuli over time, serial dependence is believed to ensure a stable conscious experience. Despite increasing studies in humans, it is unknown if the process occurs also in other species. Here, we assessed whether serial dependence occurs in dogs. To this aim, dogs were trained on a quantity discrimination task before being presented with a discrimination where one of the discriminanda was preceded by a task-irrelevant stimulus. If dogs are susceptible to serial dependence, the task-irrelevant stimulus was hypothesized to influence the perception of the subsequently presented quantity. Our results revealed that dogs perceived the currently presented quantity to be closer to the one presented briefly before, in accordance with serial dependence. The direction and strength of the effect were comparable to those observed in humans. Data regarding dogs’ attention during the task suggest that dogs used two different quantity estimation mechanisms, an indication of a higher cognitive mechanism involved in the process. The present results are the first empirical evidence that serial dependence extends beyond humans, suggesting that the mechanism is shared by phylogenetically distant mammals.

show abstract

“…), but there is also a temporal context which involves the integration of social information over time. Temporal context refers to the idea that information about emotions is dynamic, unfolds over time, and is subject to change 15 , 51 , 52 . Both spatial and temporal context can be informative in emotion perception.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inferential Emotion Tracking reveals impaired context-based emotion processing in individuals with high Autism Quotient scores

Ortega

Chen

Whitney

2023

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Emotion perception is essential for successful social interactions and maintaining long-term relationships with friends and family. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience social communication deficits and have reported difficulties in facial expression recognition. However, emotion recognition depends on more than just processing face expression; context is critically important to correctly infer the emotions of others. Whether context-based emotion processing is impacted in those with Autism remains unclear. Here, we used a recently developed context-based emotion perception task, called Inferential Emotion Tracking (IET), and investigated whether individuals who scored high on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) had deficits in context-based emotion perception. Using 34 videos (including Hollywood movies, home videos, and documentaries), we tested 102 participants as they continuously tracked the affect (valence and arousal) of a blurred-out, invisible character. We found that individual differences in Autism Quotient scores were more strongly correlated with IET task accuracy than they are with traditional face emotion perception tasks. This correlation remained significant even when controlling for potential covarying factors, general intelligence, and performance on traditional face perception tasks. These findings suggest that individuals with ASD may have impaired perception of contextual information, it reveals the importance of developing ecologically relevant emotion perception tasks in order to better assess and treat ASD, and it provides a new direction for further research on context-based emotion perception deficits in ASD.

show abstract

Serial dependence in emotion perception mirrors the autocorrelations in natural emotion statistics

Cited by 6 publications

References 67 publications

Positive serial dependence in ratings of food images for appeal and calories

Positive serial dependence in ratings of food images for appeal and calories

Visual continuum in non-human animals: serial dependence revealed in dogs

Inferential Emotion Tracking reveals impaired context-based emotion processing in individuals with high Autism Quotient scores

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About