TY - JOUR
T1 - Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception
AU - Kominsky, Jonathan F.
AU - Scholl, Brian J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/10
Y1 - 2020/10
N2 - We can perceive not only low-level features of events such as color and motion, but also seemingly higher-level properties such as causality. A prototypical example of causal perception is the ‘launching effect’: one object (A) moves toward a stationary second object (B) until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving in the same direction. Beyond these motions themselves — and regardless of any higher-level beliefs — this display induces a vivid visual impression of causality, wherein A is seen to cause B's motion. Do such percepts reflect a unitary category of visual processing, or might there be multiple distinct forms of causal perception? While launching is often simply equated with causal perception, researchers have sometimes described other phenomena such as ‘triggering’ (in which B moves faster than A) and ‘entraining’ (in which A continues to move alongside B). We used psychophysical methods to determine whether these labels really carve visual processing at its joints, and how putatively different forms of causal perception relate to each other. Previous research demonstrated retinotopically specific adaptation to causality: exposure to causal launching makes subsequent ambiguous events in that same location more likely to be seen as non-causal ‘passing’. Here, after replicating this effect, we show that exposure to triggering also yields retinotopically specific adaptation for subsequent ambiguous launching displays, but that exposure to entraining does not. Collectively, these results reveal that visual processing distinguishes some (but not all) types of causal interactions.
AB - We can perceive not only low-level features of events such as color and motion, but also seemingly higher-level properties such as causality. A prototypical example of causal perception is the ‘launching effect’: one object (A) moves toward a stationary second object (B) until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving in the same direction. Beyond these motions themselves — and regardless of any higher-level beliefs — this display induces a vivid visual impression of causality, wherein A is seen to cause B's motion. Do such percepts reflect a unitary category of visual processing, or might there be multiple distinct forms of causal perception? While launching is often simply equated with causal perception, researchers have sometimes described other phenomena such as ‘triggering’ (in which B moves faster than A) and ‘entraining’ (in which A continues to move alongside B). We used psychophysical methods to determine whether these labels really carve visual processing at its joints, and how putatively different forms of causal perception relate to each other. Previous research demonstrated retinotopically specific adaptation to causality: exposure to causal launching makes subsequent ambiguous events in that same location more likely to be seen as non-causal ‘passing’. Here, after replicating this effect, we show that exposure to triggering also yields retinotopically specific adaptation for subsequent ambiguous launching displays, but that exposure to entraining does not. Collectively, these results reveal that visual processing distinguishes some (but not all) types of causal interactions.
KW - Adaptation
KW - Causal perception
KW - Entraining
KW - Launching
KW - Triggering
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85088087605&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104339
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104339
M3 - Article
C2 - 32711120
AN - SCOPUS:85088087605
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 203
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 104339
ER -