UC Berkeley

In any given perceptual task, the visual system selectively weighs or filters incoming information. The particular set of weights or filters form a kind of template, which reveals the regions or types of information that are particularly useful for a given perceptual decision.1,2 Unfortunately, sensory input is noisy and ever changing. To compensate for these fluctuations, the visual system could adopt a strategy of biasing the templates such that they reflect a temporal smoothing of input, which would be a form of serial dependence.3-5 Here, we demonstrate that perceptual templates are, in fact, altered by serial dependence. Using a simple orientation detection task and classification-image technique, we found that perceptual templates are systematically biased toward previously seen, task-irrelevant orientations. The results of an orientation discrimination task suggest that this shift in perceptual template derives from a change in the perceptual appearance of orientation. Our study reveals how serial dependence biases internal templates of orientation and suggests that the sensitivity of classification-image techniques in general could be improved by taking into account history-dependent fluctuations in templates.