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

ELife
Benedikt V EhingerPeter König

Abstract

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.

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Citations

Dec 12, 2019·Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics·E D BorgesA A Vireque
Jun 21, 2018·Attention, Perception & Psychophysics·Musen Kingsley LiBrian Odegaard
Aug 16, 2018·I-Perception·Bence Nanay
Aug 1, 2018·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Brian OdegaardSing-Hang Cheung
Nov 4, 2020·Journal of Vision·Emma E M StewartAlexander C Schütz
Dec 22, 2020·Neuroscience of Consciousness·J D KnottsBrian Odegaard
Apr 13, 2019·NeuroImage·Gabor StefanicsJakob Heinzle
Aug 25, 2021·Attention, Perception & Psychophysics·Charles J Winter, Megan A K Peters

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