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Superstitious Perceptions Reveal Properties of Internal Representations
Abstract
Everyone has seen a human face in a cloud, a pebble, or blots on a wall. Evidence of superstitious perceptions has been documented since classical antiquity, but has received little scientific attention. In the study reported here, we used superstitious perceptions in a new principled method to reveal the properties of unobservable object representations in memory. We stimulated the visual system with unstructured white noise. Observers firmly believed that they perceived the letter S in Experiment 1 and a smile on a face in Experiment 2. Using reverse correlation and computational analyses, we rendered the memory representations underlying these superstitious perceptions.
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Citations
Cited by
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Psychophysical magic: rendering the visible ‘invisible’
Kim, C.-Y., & Blake, R. (2005) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.06.012 · Cited by 451
Reverse Correlating Social Face Perception
Dotsch, R., & Todorov, A. (2012) · Social Psychological and Personality Science · doi:10.1177/1948550611430272 · Cited by 264
Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception
Vetter, P., & Newen, A. (2014) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2014.04.007 · Cited by 263
Making the ineffable explicit: estimating the information employed for face classifications
Mangini, M. C., & Biederman, I. (2004) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2802_4 · Cited by 208
Metadata
- Authors
- Gosselin, F., & Schyns, P. G.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2003-09
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 505-509
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2104390800
- Cited by
- 178
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 2.26
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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