Serial dependence in visual perception: A meta-analysis and review

Abstract

Positive sequential dependencies are phenomena in which actions, perception, decisions, and memory of features or objects are systematically biased toward visual experiences from the recent past. Among many labels, serial dependencies have been referred to as priming , sequential dependencies , sequential effects , or serial effects . Despite extensive research on the topic, the field still lacks an operational definition of what counts as serial dependence. In this meta-analysis, we review the vast literature on serial dependence and quantitatively assess its key diagnostic characteristics across several different domains of visual perception. The meta-analyses fully characterize serial dependence in orientation, face, and numerosity perception. They show that serial dependence is defined by four main kinds of tuning: serial dependence decays with time (temporal-tuning), it depends on relative spatial location (spatial-tuning), it occurs only between similar features and objects (feature-tuning), and it is modulated by attention (attentional-tuning). We also review studies of serial dependence that report single observer data, highlighting the importance of individual differences in serial dependence. Finally, we discuss a range of outstanding questions and novel research avenues that are prompted by the meta-analyses. Together, the meta-analyses provide a full characterization of serial dependence as an operationally defined family of visual phenomena, and they outline several of the key diagnostic criteria for serial dependence that should serve as guideposts for future research.

Individual differences reveal similarities in serial dependencies across perceptual tasks, but no relation to serial dependencies for oculomotor behavior

“…For example, seeing a leftward-oriented grating in the previous trial will lead to a more leftward response in the current trial (3). Similar attractive sequential effects have been reported across the whole perceptual hierarchy, ranging from simple orientation or color judgments to judgments to complex motion patterns or facial identity (4), but also in attention and memory research (5) or oculomotor control (6). One of the main theories of why these effects occur is that since our natural sensory input contains strong autocorrelations over time, integrating previous information can be beneficial to reduce noise and stabilize perception (3).…”

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

“…This attractive bias is an adaptive change in sensory information that makes current perception assimilate towards previously seen stimuli. It is widely reported in perceptual judgements about many stimuli from simple (e.g., such as orientation and spatial frequency 23,24 ) to complex judgements about face perception (e.g., gender, attractiveness, identity 8 ), scene perception 37 , and aesthetics 30 . 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 .…”

“…Recent evidence revealed specialised processing of food stimuli in the ventral visual pathway 4-6 , 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 dependence 7,8 ). We examined serial dependence for food in two large samples (n>300) that rated sequences of food images for either ‘appeal’ or ‘calories’.…”

Effects of attention on the asymmetric serial dependences between form and motion patterns and their computational processes

“…Besides, this finding further enriches the evidence for the proposal that serial dependence occurs at different stages of perception 22,[30][31][32][33][34] . shown that serial dependence occurs within a 12-second time window, meaning that only the two stimuli presented within that time window can be integrated 16,18 . In You et al (2023) 11 , there are at least three flow and three form displays presented in that time.…”

“…One of them is the serial dependence, which was firstly proposed by Fischer and Whitney (2014) 16 . They found that the estimate of the currently presented orientation was biased toward the previously seen orientation (also see [17][18][19] ). Inspired by their studies, Wang et al (2022) 9 alternatively showed participants form and flow displays in some conditions.…”