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Individual differences in the tendency to see the expected

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 07:35 authored by Nora Andermane, Jenny BostenJenny Bosten, Anil SethAnil Seth, Jamie WardJamie Ward
Research has established that prior knowledge of visual stimuli facilitates their entry into awareness. We adopted an individual differences approach to explore whether a tendency to ‘see the expected’ is general or method-specific. We administered a binocular rivalry task and manipulated selective attention, as well as induced expectations via predictive context, self-generated imagery, expectancy cues, and perceptual priming. Most prior manipulations led to a facilitated awareness of the biased percept in binocular rivalry, whereas strong signal primes led to a suppressed awareness, i.e., adaptation. Correlations and factor analysis revealed that the facilitatory effect of priors on visual awareness is closely related to attentional control. We also investigated whether expectation-based biases predict perceptual abilities. Adaptation to strong primes predicted improved naturalistic change detection and the facilitatory effect of weak primes predicted the experience of perceptual anomalies. Taken together, our results indicate that the facilitatory effect of priors may be underpinned by an attentional mechanism but the tendency to ‘see the expected’ is method-specific.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Consciousness and Cognition

ISSN

1053-8100

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

85

Page range

1-20

Article number

a102989

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2020-07-22

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2021-09-18

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2020-07-21

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