Humans treat unreliable filled-in percepts as more real than veridical ones

TY - JOUR

T1 - Humans treat unreliable filled-in percepts as more real than veridical ones

AU - Ehinger, Benedikt V

AU - Häusser, Katja

AU - Ossandón, José P

AU - König, Peter

PY - 2017/5/16

Y1 - 2017/5/16

N2 - Humans often evaluate sensory signals according to their reliability for optimal decision-making. However, how do we evaluate percepts generated in the absence of direct input that are, therefore, completely unreliable? Here, we utilize the phenomenon of filling-in occurring at the physiological blind-spots to compare partially inferred and veridical percepts. Subjects chose between stimuli that elicit filling-in, and perceptually equivalent ones presented outside the blind-spots, looking for a Gabor stimulus without a small orthogonal inset. In ambiguous conditions, when the stimuli were physically identical and the inset was absent in both, subjects behaved opposite to optimal, preferring the blind-spot stimulus as the better example of a collinear stimulus, even though no relevant veridical information was available. Thus, a percept that is partially inferred is paradoxically considered more reliable than a percept based on external input. In other words: Humans treat filled-in inferred percepts as more real than veridical ones.

AB - Humans often evaluate sensory signals according to their reliability for optimal decision-making. However, how do we evaluate percepts generated in the absence of direct input that are, therefore, completely unreliable? Here, we utilize the phenomenon of filling-in occurring at the physiological blind-spots to compare partially inferred and veridical percepts. Subjects chose between stimuli that elicit filling-in, and perceptually equivalent ones presented outside the blind-spots, looking for a Gabor stimulus without a small orthogonal inset. In ambiguous conditions, when the stimuli were physically identical and the inset was absent in both, subjects behaved opposite to optimal, preferring the blind-spot stimulus as the better example of a collinear stimulus, even though no relevant veridical information was available. Thus, a percept that is partially inferred is paradoxically considered more reliable than a percept based on external input. In other words: Humans treat filled-in inferred percepts as more real than veridical ones.

KW - Journal Article

U2 - 10.7554/eLife.21761

DO - 10.7554/eLife.21761

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

C2 - 28506359

VL - 6

SP - Art. e21761

JO - ELIFE

JF - ELIFE

SN - 2050-084X

ER -