ABSTRACT
Perception is shaped not only by current sensory inputs but also by expectations generated from past sensory experience. Humans viewing ambiguous stimuli in a stable visual environment are generally more likely to see the perceptual interpretation that matches their expectations, but it is less clear how expectations affect perception when the environment is changing predictably. We used statistical learning to teach observers arbitrary sequences of natural images and employed binocular rivalry to measure perceptual selection as a function of predictive context. In contrast to previous demonstrations of preferential selection of predicted images for conscious awareness, we found that recently acquired sequence predictions biased perceptual selection toward unexpected natural images and image categories. These perceptual biases were not associated with explicit recall of the learned image sequences. Our results show that exposure to arbitrary sequential structure in the environment impacts subsequent visual perceptual selection and awareness. Specifically, for natural image sequences, the visual system prioritizes what is surprising, or statistically informative, over what is expected, or statistically likely.
Subject(s)
Perceptual Masking/physiology , Vision Disparity/physiology , Vision, Binocular/physiology , Visual Perception/physiology , Adolescent , Adult , Awareness , Biometry , Female , Humans , Male , Young AdultABSTRACT
Acculturation has been linked to neuropsychological performance in several ethnic groups. However, research among Latina/o samples has examined primarily Mexicans/Mexican Americans and has not examined Latina/o clinical populations of Caribbean descent. This study examined associations between a multidimensional acculturation measure and neuropsychological performance among 82 HIV+ Caribbean Latina/o adults. Multivariate results showed that US acculturation significantly predicted 11-14% of the variance in global neuropsychological functioning, verbal fluency, and processing speed, whereas Latina/o acculturation predicted 6-8% of the variance in motor and executive function (trend level associations). Both linguistic and nonlinguistic cultural factors had distinct effects on neuropsychological performance.
