Files and links (2)
Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions
Consciousness and Cognition, Vol.128, pp.1-18
2025
PMID: 39864300
Abstract
Decision confidence plays a critical role in humans’ ability to make adaptive decisions in a noisy perceptual world. Despite its importance, there is currently little consensus about the computations underlying confidence judgements in perceptual decisions. To better understand these mechanisms, we addressed the extent to which confidence is informed by a naturalistic prior distribution. Contrary to previous research, we did not require participants to internalise parameters of an arbitrary prior distribution. We instead used a novel psychophysical paradigm leveraging probability distributions of low-level image features in natural scenes, which are well-known to influence perception. Participants reported the subjective upright of naturalistic image patches, targets, and then reported their confidence in their orientation responses. We used computational modelling to relate the statistics of the low-level features in the targets to the average distribution of these features across many naturalistic images, a prior. Our results showed that participants’ perceptual and importantly, their confidence judgments aligned with an internalised prior for image statistics. Overall, our study highlights the importance of naturalistic task designs that capitalise on existing, long-term priors to further understand the computational basis of confidence.
Details
- Title
- Priors for natural image statistics inform confidence in perceptual decisions
- Authors
- Rebecca K. West (Corresponding Author) - The University of QueenslandEmily J. A-Izzeddin - Justus-Liebig-Universität GießenDavid K. Sewell - The University of QueenslandWilliam J. Harrison - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health - Psychology
- Publication details
- Consciousness and Cognition, Vol.128, pp.1-18
- Publisher
- Academic Press
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.concog.2025.103818
- ISSN
- 1090-2376; 1053-8100
- PMID
- 39864300
- Copyright note
- © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Data Availability
- Data has been made available.
- Organisation Unit
- Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991100223202621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
12 Record Views
InCites Highlights
These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web Of Science research areas
- Psychology, Experimental