Can you experience 'top-down' effects on perception?: The case of race categories and perceived lightness

Does culture moderate the encoding and recognition of negative cues? Evidence from an eye-tracking study

Cross-cultural research has elucidated many important differences between people from Western European and East Asian cultural backgrounds regarding how each group encodes and consolidates the contents of complex visual stimuli. While Western European groups typically demonstrate a perceptual bias towards centralised information, East Asian groups favour a perceptual bias towards background information. However, this research has largely focused on the perception of neutral cues and thus questions remain regarding cultural group differences in both the perception and recognition of negative, emotionally significant cues. The present study therefore compared Western European (n = 42) and East Asian (n = 40) participants on a free-viewing task and a subsequent memory task utilising negative and neutral social cues. Attentional deployment to the centralised versus background components of negative and neutral social cues was indexed via eye-tracking, and memory was assessed with a cued-recognition task two days later. While both groups demonstrated an attentional bias towards the centralised components of the neutral cues, only the Western European group demonstrated this bias in the case of the negative cues. There were no significant differences observed between Western European and East Asian groups in terms of memory accuracy, although the Western European group was unexpectedly less sensitive to the centralised components of the negative cues. These findings suggest that culture modulates low-level attentional deployment to negative information, however not higher-level recognition after a temporal interval. This paper is, to our knowledge, the first to concurrently consider the effect of culture on both attentional outcomes and memory for both negative and neutral cues.

Dissociable Neural Mechanisms Underlie the Effects of Attention on Visual Appearance and Response Bias

A prominent theoretical framework spanning philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience holds that selective attention penetrates early stages of perceptual processing to alter the subjective visual experience of behaviorally relevant stimuli. For example, searching for a red apple at the grocery store might make the relevant color appear brighter and more saturated compared with seeing the exact same red apple while searching for a yellow banana. In contrast, recent proposals argue that data supporting attention-related changes in appearance reflect decision- and motor-level response biases without concurrent changes in perceptual experience. Here, we tested these accounts by evaluating attentional modulations of EEG responses recorded from male and female human subjects while they compared the perceived contrast of attended and unattended visual stimuli rendered at different levels of physical contrast. We found that attention enhanced the amplitude of the P1 component, an early evoked potential measured over visual cortex. A linking model based on signal detection theory suggests that response gain modulations of the P1 component track attention-induced changes in perceived contrast as measured with behavior. In contrast, attentional cues induced changes in the baseline amplitude of posterior alpha band oscillations (∼9-12 Hz), an effect that best accounts for cue-induced response biases, particularly when no stimuli are presented or when competing stimuli are similar and decisional uncertainty is high. The observation of dissociable neural markers that are linked to changes in subjective appearance and response bias supports a more unified theoretical account and demonstrates an approach to isolate subjective aspects of selective information processing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Does attention alter visual appearance, or does it simply induce response bias? In the present study, we examined these competing accounts using EEG and linking models based on signal detection theory. We found that response gain modulations of the visually evoked P1 component best accounted for attention-induced changes in visual appearance. In contrast, cue-induced baseline shifts in alpha band activity better explained response biases. Together, these results suggest that attention concurrently impacts visual appearance and response bias, and that these processes can be experimentally isolated.

Pupillary evidence reveals the influence of conceptual association on brightness perception

Our visual experience often varies based on momentary thoughts and feelings. For example, when positive concepts are invoked, visual objects may appear brighter (e.g., a "brighter" smile). However, it remains unclear whether this phenomenological experience is driven by a genuine top-down modulation of brightness perception or by a mere response bias. To investigate this issue, we use pupillometry as a more objective measure of perceived brightness. We asked participants to judge the brightness level of an iso-luminant gray color patch after evaluating the valence of a positive or negative word. We found that the gray color patch elicited greater pupillary light reflex and more frequent "brighter" responses after observers had evaluated the valence of a positive word. As pupillary light reflex is unlikely driven by voluntary control, these results suggest that the conceptual association between affect and luminance can modulate brightness perception.

Measuring Voluntary Control Over Hallucinations: The Yale Control Over Perceptual Experiences (COPE) Scales

Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) frequently cause significant distress and dysfunction, and may be unresponsive to conventional treatments. Some voice-hearers report an ability to fully control the onset and offset of their AVH, making them significantly less disruptive. Measuring and understanding these abilities may lead to novel interventions to enhance control over AVH. Fifty-two voice-hearers participated in the pilot study. 318 participants with frequent AVH participated in the validation study. A pool of 59 items was developed by a diverse team including voice-hearers and clinicians. After the pilot study, 35 items were retained. Factorial structure was assessed with exploratory (EFA, n = 148) and confirmatory (CFA, n = 170) factor analyses. Reliability and convergent validity were assessed using a comprehensive battery of validated phenomenological and clinical scales. CFA on the final 18 items supported two factors for a Methods of Control Scale (5 items each, average ω = .87), and one factor for a Degree of Control Scale (8 items, average ω = .95). Correlation with clinical measures supported convergent validity. Degree of control was associated with positive clinical outcomes in voice-hearers both with and without a psychosis-spectrum diagnosis. Degree of control also varied with quality of life independently of symptom severity and AVH content. The Yale control over perceptual experiences (COPE) Scales robustly measure voice-hearers' control over AVH and exhibit sound psychometric properties. Results demonstrate that the capacity to voluntarily control AVH is independently associated with positive clinical outcomes. Reliable measurement of control over AVH will enable future development of interventions meant to bolster that control.

Rapid detection of social interactions is the result of domain general attentional processes

Using visual search displays of interacting and non-interacting pairs, it has been demonstrated that detection of social interactions is facilitated. For example, two people facing each other are found faster than two people with their backs turned: an effect that may reflect social binding. However, recent work has shown the same effects with non-social arrow stimuli, where towards facing arrows are detected faster than away facing arrows. This latter work suggests a primary mechanism is an attention orienting process driven by basic low-level direction cues. However, evidence for lower level attentional processes does not preclude a potential additional role of higher-level social processes. Therefore, in this series of experiments we test this idea further by directly comparing basic visual features that orient attention with representations of socially interacting individuals. Results confirm the potency of orienting of attention via low-level visual features in the detection of interacting objects. In contrast, there is little evidence for the representation of social interactions influencing initial search performance.

Selective interference of hand posture with grasping capability estimation

Previous studies have shown that judgments about how one would perform an action are affected by the current body posture. Hence, judging one's capability to grasp an object between index and thumb is influenced by their aperture at the time of the judgment. This finding can be explained by a modification of the internal representation of one's hand through the effect of sensorimotor input. Alternatively, the influence of grip aperture might be mediated by a response congruency effect, so that a "less" vs. "more" open grip would bias the judgment toward a "less" vs. "more" capable response. To specify the role of sensorimotor input in prospective action judgments, we asked participants to estimate their capability to grasp circles between index and thumb while performing a secondary task that requires them to squeeze a ball with these two fingers (precision grip) or with a different hand configuration (palm grip). Experiment 1 showed that participants underestimated their grasping capability when the squeezing task involved the same grip as the judged action (precision grip) and their estimates were bound to the relative size of objects as revealed by size-contrast illusions (Ebbinghaus). Experiment 2 showed that the grip reduction caused by the squeezing task also interfered with the discrimination of large numbers in magnitude judgments, but this incongruency effect was only observed for the palm grip. The dissociated effects of the two grips in graspability and numerical judgments indicate that sensorimotor input may affect the perceived ability to grasp objects, independently of response congruency, by modifying the representation of the hand in action.

How vertical elevation affects self-other integration as measured by the joint Simon effect

Earlier findings suggest that positions of power decrease self-other integration and increase psychological distance to others. Until now, however, evidence for this relation rests exclusively on subjective measures. The current research instead employed a vertical joint Simon task to measure self-other integration. This task assesses the extent to which people represent their own actions in reference to their co-actor's, also referred to as the joint Simon effect. Building on cultural associations between power and vertical elevation, we manipulated whether participants were in an elevated (high-power) or lower (low-power) seating position. Experiments 1a and 1b reanalyzed existing datasets and found that elevated (vs. lower) seating position decreased the joint Simon effect, consistent with predictions. Experiment 2 provides a high-powered replication of this finding. Yet, further analyses revealed that feelings of power - measured as a manipulation check and indeed demonstrating that the manipulation was successful - did not mediate or moderate the effect of seating position on the joint Simon effect. Therefore, it is possible that the effect of seating elevation was driven through other aspects of that manipulation than feelings of power. We discuss these and suggest ways to test these alternative explanations.

The foggy effect of egocentric distance in a nonverbal paradigm

Inaccurate egocentric distance and speed perception are two main explanations for the high accident rate associated with driving in foggy weather. The effect of foggy weather on speed has been well studied. However, its effect on egocentric distance perception is poorly understood. The paradigm for measuring perceived egocentric distance in previous studies was verbal estimation instead of a nonverbal paradigm. In the current research, a nonverbal paradigm, the visual matching task, was used. Our results from the nonverbal task revealed a robust foggy effect on egocentric distance. Observers overestimated the egocentric distance in foggy weather compared to in clear weather. The higher the concentration of fog, the more serious the overestimation. This effect of fog on egocentric distance was not limited to a certain distance range but was maintained in action space and vista space. Our findings confirm the foggy effect with a nonverbal paradigm and reveal that people may perceive egocentric distance more "accurately" in foggy weather than when it is measured with a verbal estimation task.

Perception during use of force and the likelihood of firing upon an unarmed person

Stress can impact perception, especially during use-of-force. Research efforts can thus advance both theory and practice by examining how perception during use-of-force might drive behavior. The current study explored the relationship between perceptual judgments and performance during novel close-combat training. Analyses included perceptual judgments from close-combat assessments conducted pre-training and post-training that required realistic use-of-force decisions in addition to an artificially construed stress-inoculation event used as a training exercise. Participants demonstrated significant reductions in situational awareness while under direct fire, which correlated to increased physiological stress. The initial likelihood of firing upon an unarmed person predicted the perceptual shortcomings of later stress-inoculation training. Subsequently, likelihood of firing upon an unarmed person was reduced following the stress-inoculation training. These preliminary findings have several implications for low or zero-cost solutions that might help trainers identify individuals who are underprepared for field responsibilities.

Effects of Language on Visual Perception

Does language change what we perceive? Does speaking different languages cause us to perceive things differently? We review the behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the influence of language on perception, with an emphasis on the visual modality. Effects of language on perception can be observed both in higher-level processes such as recognition and in lower-level processes such as discrimination and detection. A consistent finding is that language causes us to perceive in a more categorical way. Rather than being fringe or exotic, as they are sometimes portrayed, we discuss how effects of language on perception naturally arise from the interactive and predictive nature of perception.

Examining the Temporal Limits of Enhanced Visual Feature Detection in Children With Autism

The enhanced perceptual processing of visual features in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is supported by an abundance of evidence in the spatial domain, with less robust evidence regarding whether this extends to information presented across time. The current study aimed to replicate and extend previous work finding that children with an ASD demonstrated enhanced perceptual accuracy in detecting feature-based (but not categorically defined) targets in time, when these were presented quickly, at a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 50 ms per item. Specifically, we extend the range of SOAs to examine the temporal boundaries of this enhanced accuracy and examine whether there is a relationship between ASD-related traits and detection accuracy on temporal visual search tasks. Individuals with autism perceived feature-based targets with statistically higher accuracy than their typically developing peers between SOAs of 39 and 65 ms and were numerically faster at all SOAs. No group differences were noted for category-based task accuracy. Our results also demonstrated that ASD-related traits measured by the autism spectrum quotient were positively correlated with accuracy on the feature-based task. Overall, results suggest that accurate visual perception of features (particularly color) is enhanced in children with ASD across time. LAY SUMMARY: Our results suggest that children with autism are able to process visual features, such as color, more accurately than typically developing children, even when these are presented very rapidly. Accuracy was higher in children with higher levels of autism-related traits and symptoms. Our findings suggest that more accurate visual perception exists not only across space in children with autism, as much of the existing literature demonstrates, but also over time. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1561-1572. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A neurodynamic model of the interaction between color perception and color memory

The memory color effect and Spanish castle illusion have been taken as evidence of the cognitive penetrability of vision. In the same manner, the successful decoding of color-related brain signals in functional neuroimaging studies suggests the retrieval of memory colors associated with a perceived gray object. Here, we offer an alternative account of these findings based on the design principles of adaptive resonance theory (ART). In ART, conscious perception is a consequence of a resonant state. Resonance emerges in a recurrent cortical circuit when a bottom-up spatial pattern agrees with the top-down expectation. When they do not agree, a special control mechanism is activated that resets the network and clears off erroneous expectation, thus allowing the bottom-up activity to always dominate in perception. We developed a color ART circuit and evaluated its behavior in computer simulations. The model helps to explain how traces of erroneous expectations about incoming color are eventually removed from the color perception, although their transient effect may be visible in behavioral responses or in brain imaging. Our results suggest that the color ART circuit, as a predictive computational system, is almost never penetrable, because it is equipped with computational mechanisms designed to constrain the impact of the top-down predictions on ongoing perceptual processing.

Racial bias in face perception is sensitive to instructions but not introspection

Faces with typically African features are perceived as darker than they really are. We investigated how early in processing the bias emerges, whether participants are aware of it, and whether it can be altered by explicit instructions. We presented pairs of faces sequentially, manipulated the luminance and morphological features of each, and asked participants which was lighter, and how confident they were in their responses. In Experiment 1, pre-response mouse cursor trajectories showed that morphology affected motor output just as early as luminance did. Furthermore, participants were not slower to respond or less confident when morphological cues drove them to give a response that conflicted with the actual luminance of the faces. However, Experiment 2 showed that participants could be instructed to reduce their reliance on morphology, even at early stages of processing. All stimuli used, code to run the experiments reported, raw data, and analyses scripts and their outputs can be found at https://osf.io/brssn.

Stimulus visibility and uncertainty mediate the influence of attention on response bias and visual contrast appearance

Although attention is known to improve the efficacy of sensory processing, the impact of attention on subjective visual appearance is still a matter of debate. Although recent studies suggest that attention can alter the appearance of stimulus contrast, others argue that these changes reflect response bias induced by attention cues. Here, we provide evidence that attention has effects on both appearance and response bias. In a comparative judgment task in which subjects reported whether the attended or unattended visual stimulus had a higher perceived contrast, attention induced substantial baseline-offset response bias as well as small but significant changes in subjective contrast appearance when subjects viewed near-threshold stimuli. However, when subjects viewed suprathreshold stimuli, baseline-offset response bias decreased and attention primarily changed contrast appearance. To address the possibility that these changes in appearance might be influenced by uncertainty due to the attended and unattended stimuli having similar physical contrasts, subjects performed an equality judgment task in which they reported if the contrast of the two stimuli was the same or different. We found that, although there were still attention-induced changes in contrast appearance at lower contrasts, the robust changes in contrast appearance at higher contrasts observed in the comparative judgment task were diminished in the equality judgment task. Together, these results suggest that attention can impact both response bias and appearance, and these two types of attention effects are differentially mediated by stimulus visibility and uncertainty. Collectively, these findings help constrain arguments about the cognitive penetrability of perception.

The cognitive penetrability of perception: A blocked debate and a tentative solution

Despite the extensive body of psychological findings suggesting that cognition influences perception, the debate between defenders and detractors of the cognitive penetrability of perception persists. While detractors demand more strictness in psychological experiments, proponents consider that empirical studies show that cognitive penetrability occurs. These considerations have led some theorists to propose that the debate has reached a dead end. The issue about where perception ends and cognition begins is, I argue, one of the reasons why the debate is cornered. Another reason is the inability of psychological studies to present uncontroversial interpretations of the results obtained. To dive into other kinds of empirical sources is, therefore, required to clarify the debate. In this paper, I explain where the debate is blocked, and suggest that neuroscientific evidence together with the predictive coding account, might decant the discussion on the side of the penetrability thesis.

An Upward-Facing Surface Appears Darker: The Role Played by the Light-From-Above Assumption in Lightness Perception

The human visual system can extract information on surface reflectance (lightness) from light intensity; this, however, confounds information on reflectance and illumination. We hypothesized that the visual system, to solve this lightness problem, utilizes the internally held prior assumption that illumination falls from above. Experiment 1 showed that an upward-facing surface is perceived to be darker than a downward-facing surface, proving our hypothesis. Experiment 2 showed the same results in the absence of explicit illumination cues. The effect of the light-from-left prior assumption was not observed in Experiment 3. The upward- and downward-facing surface stimuli in Experiments 1 and 2 showed no difference in a two-dimensional configuration or three-dimensional structure, and the participants' perceived lightness appeared to be affected by the observers' prior assumption that illumination is always from above. Other studies have not accounted for this illusory effect, and this study's finding provides additional insights into the study of lightness perception.

The "face race lightness illusion": An effect of the eyes and pupils?

In an internet-based, forced-choice, test of the ‘face race lightness illusion’, the majority of respondents, regardless of their ethnicity, reported perceiving the African face as darker in skin tone than the European face, despite the mean luminance, contrast and numbers of pixels of the images were identical. In the laboratory, using eye tracking, it was found that eye fixations were distributed differently on the African face and European face, so that gaze dwelled relatively longer onto the locally brighter regions of the African face and, in turn, mean pupil diameters were smaller than for the European face. There was no relationship between pupils’ size and implicit social attitude (IAT) scores. In another experiment, the faces were presented either tachistoscopically (140 ms) or longer (2500 ms) so that, when gaze was prevented from looking directly at the faces in the former condition, the tendency to report the African face as “dark” disappeared, but it was present when gaze was free to move for just a few seconds. We conclude that the presence of the illusion depends on oculomotor behavior and we also propose a novel account based on a predictive strategy of sensory acquisition. Specifically, by differentially directing gaze towards to facial regions that are locally different in luminance, the resulting changes in retinal illuminance yield respectively darker or brighter percepts while attending to each face, hence minimizing the mismatch between visual input and the learned perceptual prototypes of ethnic categories.

Cognitive penetration of early vision in face perception

Cognitive and affective penetration of perception refers to the influence that higher mental states such as beliefs and emotions have on perceptual systems. Psychological and neuroscientific studies appear to show that these states modulate the visual system at the visuomotor, attentional, and late levels of processing. However, empirical evidence showing that similar consequences occur in early stages of visual processing seems to be scarce. In this paper, I argue that psychological evidence does not seem to be either sufficient or necessary to argue in favour of or against the cognitive penetration of perception in either late or early vision. In order to do that we need to have recourse to brain imaging techniques. Thus, I introduce a neuroscientific study and argue that it seems to provide well-grounded evidence for the cognitive penetration of early vision in face perception. I also examine and reject alternative explanations to my conclusion.

Contextual Effects in Face Lightness Perception Are Not Expertise-Dependent

Lightness judgments of face stimuli are context-dependent (i.e., judgments of face lightness are influenced by race classification). Here, we tested whether contextual effects in face lightness perception are modulated by expertise, exploiting well-known other race effects in face perception. We used a lightness-matching paradigm where Chinese and White observers were asked to adjust the lightness of a variable face to match that of a standard face. The context (i.e., race category) of the two faces could be the same or different. Our data indicated that both groups had the smallest matching errors in same-context trials, for which errors did not vary across different racial categories. For cross-context trials, observers made the largest (negative) errors when the reference face was Black, as compared to Chinese and White references, for which matching errors were no different from zero or trended positively. Critically, this pattern was similar for both groups. We suggest that contextual influences in lightness perception are unlikely to be guided by classical mechanisms that drive face perception. We instead speculate that such influences manifest in terms of an interaction between race assumptions (e.g., expected surface reflectance patterns) and traditional mechanisms for reflectance computations.

Changing What You See by Changing What You Know: The Role of Attention

Attending is a cognitive process that incorporates a person's knowledge, goals, and expectations. What we perceive when we attend to one thing is different from what we perceive when we attend to something else. Yet, it is often argued that attentional effects do not count as evidence that perception is influenced by cognition. I investigate two arguments often given to justify excluding attention. The first is arguing that attention is a post-perceptual process reflecting selection between fully constructed perceptual representations. The second is arguing that attention as a pre-perceptual process that simply changes the input to encapsulated perceptual systems. Both of these arguments are highly problematic. Although some attentional effects can indeed be construed as post-perceptual, others operate by changing perceptual content across the entire visual hierarchy. Although there is a natural analogy between spatial attention and a change of input, the analogy falls apart when we consider other forms of attention. After dispelling these arguments, I make a case for thinking of attention not as a confound, but as one of the mechanisms by which cognitive states affect perception by going through cases in which the same or similar visual inputs are perceived differently depending on the observer's cognitive state, and instances where cuing an observer using language affects what one sees. Lastly, I provide two compelling counter-examples to the critique that although cognitive influences on perception can be demonstrated in the laboratory, it is impossible to really experience them for oneself in a phenomenologically compelling way. Taken together, the current evidence strongly supports the thesis that what we know routinely influences what we see, that the same sensory input can be perceived differently depending on the current cognitive state of the viewer, and that phenomenologically salient demonstrations are possible if certain conditions are met.

Predictions penetrate perception: Converging insights from brain, behaviour and disorder

It is argued that during ongoing visual perception, the brain is generating top-down predictions to facilitate, guide and constrain the processing of incoming sensory input. Here we demonstrate that these predictions are drawn from a diverse range of cognitive processes, in order to generate the richest and most informative prediction signals. This is consistent with a central role for cognitive penetrability in visual perception. We review behavioural and mechanistic evidence that indicate a wide spectrum of domains-including object recognition, contextual associations, cognitive biases and affective state-that can directly influence visual perception. We combine these insights from the healthy brain with novel observations from neuropsychiatric disorders involving visual hallucinations, which highlight the consequences of imbalance between top-down signals and incoming sensory information. Together, these lines of evidence converge to indicate that predictive penetration, be it cognitive, social or emotional, should be considered a fundamental framework that supports visual perception.

The Face-Race Lightness Illusion Is Not Driven by Low-level Stimulus Properties: An Empirical Reply to Firestone and Scholl (2014)

Levin and Banaji (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 501-512, 2006) reported a lightness illusion in which participants appeared to perceive Black faces to be darker than White faces, even though the faces were matched for overall brightness and contrast. Recently, this finding was challenged by Firestone and Scholl (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 2014), who argued that the nominal illusion remained even when the faces were blurred so as to make their race undetectable, and concluded that uncontrolled perceptual differences between the stimulus faces drove at least some observations of the original distortion effect. In this paper we report that measures of race perception used by Firestone and Scholl were insufficiently sensitive. We demonstrate that a forced choice race-identification task not only reveals that participants could detect the race of the blurred faces but also that participants' lightness judgments often aligned with their assignment of race.

The El Greco fallacy and pupillometry: Pupillary evidence for top-down effects on perception

In this commentary, we address the El Greco fallacy by reviewing some recent pupillary evidence supporting top-down modulation of perception. Furthermore, we give justification for including perceptual effects of attention in tests of cognitive penetrability. Together, these exhibits suggest that cognition can affect perception (i.e., they support cognitive penetrability).

Cognition can affect perception: Restating the evidence of a top-down effect

We argue that Firestone & Scholl (F&S) provide worthwhile recommendations but that their critique of research by Levin and Banaji (2006) is unfounded. In addition, we argue that F&S apply unjustified level of skepticism about top-down effects relative to other broad hypotheses about the sources of perceptual intelligence.

Seeing and thinking: Foundational issues and empirical horizons

The spectacularly varied responses to our target article raised big-picture questions about the nature of seeing and thinking, nitty-gritty experimental design details, and everything in between. We grapple with these issues, including the ready falsifiability of our view, neuroscientific theories that allow everything but demand nothing, cases where seeing and thinking conflict, mental imagery, the free press, an El Greco fallacy fallacy, hallucinogenic drugs, blue bananas, subatomic particles, Boeing 787s, and the racial identities of geometric shapes.

Revisiting the empirical case against perceptual modularity

Some theorists hold that the human perceptual system has a component that receives input only from units lower in the perceptual hierarchy. This thesis, that we shall here refer to as the encapsulation thesis, has been at the center of a continuing debate for the past few decades. Those who deny the encapsulation thesis often rely on the large body of psychological findings that allegedly suggest that perception is influenced by factors such as the beliefs, desires, goals, and the expectations of the perceiver. Proponents of the encapsulation thesis, however, often argue that, when correctly interpreted, these psychological findings are compatible with the thesis. In our view, the debate over the significance and the correct interpretation of these psychological findings has reached an impasse. We hold that this impasse is due to the methodological limitations over psychophysical experiments, and it is very unlikely that such experiments, on their own, could yield results that would settle the debate. After defending this claim, we argue that integrating data from cognitive neuroscience resolves the debate in favor of those who deny the encapsulation thesis.

Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence for “top-down” effects

What determines what we see? In contrast to the traditional “modular” understanding of perception, according to which visual processing is encapsulated from higher-level cognition, a tidal wave of recent research alleges that states such as beliefs, desires, emotions, motivations, intentions, and linguistic representations exert direct, top-down influences on what we see. There is a growing consensus that such effects are ubiquitous, and that the distinction between perception and cognition may itself be unsustainable. We argue otherwise: None of these hundreds of studies – either individually or collectively – provides compelling evidence for true top-down effects on perception, or “cognitive penetrability.” In particular, and despite their variety, we suggest that these studies all fall prey to only a handful of pitfalls. And whereas abstract theoretical challenges have failed to resolve this debate in the past, our presentation of these pitfalls is empirically anchored: In each case, we show not only how certain studies could be susceptible to the pitfall (in principle), but also how several alleged top-down effects actually are explained by the pitfall (in practice). Moreover, these pitfalls are perfectly general, with each applying to dozens of other top-down effects. We conclude by extracting the lessons provided by these pitfalls into a checklist that future work could use to convincingly demonstrate top-down effects on visual perception. The discovery of substantive top-down effects of cognition on perception would revolutionize our understanding of how the mind is organized; but without addressing these pitfalls, no such empirical report will license such exciting conclusions.

Cognitive penetrability and emotion recognition in human facial expressions

Do our background beliefs, desires, and mental images influence our perceptual experience of the emotions of others? In this paper, we will address the possibility of cognitive penetration (CP) of perceptual experience in the domain of social cognition. In particular, we focus on emotion recognition based on the visual experience of facial expressions. After introducing the current debate on CP, we review examples of perceptual adaptation for facial expressions of emotion. This evidence supports the idea that facial expressions are perceptually processed as wholes. That is, the perceptual system integrates lower-level facial features, such as eyebrow orientation, mouth angle etc., into facial compounds. We then present additional experimental evidence showing that in some cases, emotion recognition on the basis of facial expression is sensitive to and modified by the background knowledge of the subject. We argue that such sensitivity is best explained as a difference in the visual experience of the facial expression, not just as a modification of the judgment based on this experience. The difference in experience is characterized as the result of the interference of background knowledge with the perceptual integration process for faces. Thus, according to the best explanation, we have to accept CP in some cases of emotion recognition. Finally, we discuss a recently proposed mechanism for CP in the face-based recognition of emotion.