Expression in human and illusory faces (pareidolia) shows cross-domain serial dependence: evidence for common processing

David Alais; Yiben Xu; Susan Wardle; Jessica Taubert

doi:10.1167/jov.20.11.1748

Expression in human and illusory faces (pareidolia) shows cross-domain serial dependence: evidence for common processing

Journal of Vision ◽

10.1167/jov.20.11.1748 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (11) ◽

pp. 1748

Author(s):

David Alais ◽

Yiben Xu ◽

Susan Wardle ◽

Jessica Taubert

Keyword(s):

Serial Dependence ◽

Cross Domain

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Predicting confidence across observers and cognitive domains

10.31234/osf.io/dp8g2 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ning Mei ◽

Dobromir Rahnev ◽

David Soto

Keyword(s):

Serial Dependence ◽

Ongoing Debate ◽

Cognitive Domains ◽

Confidence Judgments ◽

Cross Domain ◽

Domain Generality ◽

History Of ◽

Perceptual Representations ◽

Perceptual Confidence ◽

Cognitive Paradigms

Our perceptual system appears hardwired to exploit regularities of input features across space and time in seemingly stable environments. This can lead to serial dependence effects whereby recent perceptual representations bias current perception. Serial dependence has also been demonstrated for more abstract representations such as perceptual confidence. Here we ask whether temporal patterns in the generation of confidence judgments across trials generalize across observers and different cognitive domains. Data from the Confidence Database across perceptual, memory, and cognitive paradigms was re-analyzed. Machine learning classifiers were used to predict the confidence on the current trial based on the history of confidence judgments on the previous trials. Cross-observer and cross-domain decoding results showed that a model trained to predict confidence in the perceptual domain generalized across observers to predict confidence across the different cognitive domains. Intriguingly, these serial dependence effects also generalized across correct and incorrect trials, indicating that serial dependence in confidence generation is uncoupled to metacognition (i.e. how we evaluate the precision of our own behavior). We discuss the ramifications of these findings for the ongoing debate on domain-generality vs. specificity of metacognition.

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A shared mechanism for facial expression in human faces and face pareidolia

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2021.0966 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 288 (1954) ◽

pp. 20210966

Author(s):

David Alais ◽

Yiben Xu ◽

Susan G. Wardle ◽

Jessica Taubert

Keyword(s):

Facial Expression ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Visual Features ◽

Serial Dependence ◽

Cross Domain ◽

Temporal Continuity ◽

Underlying Mechanisms ◽

Human Faces ◽

Expression Processing ◽

Expression Mechanism

Facial expressions are vital for social communication, yet the underlying mechanisms are still being discovered. Illusory faces perceived in objects (face pareidolia) are errors of face detection that share some neural mechanisms with human face processing. However, it is unknown whether expression in illusory faces engages the same mechanisms as human faces. Here, using a serial dependence paradigm, we investigated whether illusory and human faces share a common expression mechanism. First, we found that images of face pareidolia are reliably rated for expression, within and between observers, despite varying greatly in visual features. Second, they exhibit positive serial dependence for perceived facial expression, meaning an illusory face (happy or angry) is perceived as more similar in expression to the preceding one, just as seen for human faces. This suggests illusory and human faces engage similar mechanisms of temporal continuity. Third, we found robust cross-domain serial dependence of perceived expression between illusory and human faces when they were interleaved, with serial effects larger when illusory faces preceded human faces than the reverse. Together, the results support a shared mechanism for facial expression between human faces and illusory faces and suggest that expression processing is not tightly bound to human facial features.

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