Department of Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan.
Department of Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan.
Vision Res. 2020 Sep;174:41-49. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 Jun 7.
Humans can estimate global trends in dynamic information presented either as perceptual features or as symbolic codes such as numbers. Previous studies on temporal statistics estimation have shown that observers judge the temporal average of visual attributes according to information from the last few frames of the presentation sequence (in what is referred to as the recency effect). Here, we investigated how humans estimate the temporal average of number vs. orientation using identical stimuli for the two tasks. In Experiment 1, a randomly-selected single-digit number was serially presented at orientations randomly varying over time. In Experiment 2, a texture comprising a random number of Gabor elements was shown at orientations randomly varying over time. In both experiments, observers judged the temporal averages of the numerical values and orientations in separate blocks. Results showed that observers judging the temporal average of orientation relied upon information from later frames as predicted by a typical model of perceptual decision making. By contrast, for the judgement of numerical values, we found that the impacts of each temporal frame were constant or varied little across temporal frames regardless of whether the numerical information was given as digits or by the number of texture elements. The results are interpreted as evidence that distinct computational strategies may be involved in estimating the temporal averages of perceptual features and numerical information.
人类可以估计呈现的动态信息的全球趋势，这些信息既可以是感知特征，也可以是符号代码，如数字。先前关于时间统计估计的研究表明，观察者根据呈现序列的最后几帧的信息来判断视觉属性的时间平均值（这被称为近因效应）。在这里，我们研究了人类如何使用两种任务的相同刺激来估计数量和方向的时间平均值。在实验 1 中，随机选择的单个数字以随时间随机变化的方向连续呈现。在实验 2 中，一个由随机数量的 Gabor 元素组成的纹理以随时间随机变化的方向显示。在这两个实验中，观察者在单独的块中判断数值和方向的时间平均值。结果表明，观察者判断方向的时间平均值依赖于后期帧的信息，这与感知决策的典型模型预测的一致。相比之下，对于数值的判断，我们发现每个时间帧的影响在时间帧之间是恒定的或变化很小，无论数值信息是以数字还是纹理元素的数量给出。结果表明，在估计感知特征和数值信息的时间平均值时，可能涉及不同的计算策略。
