Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 47, January 2017, Pages 17-25
Consciousness and Cognition

How to (and how not to) think about top-down influences on visual perception

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.05.008Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Whether cognition influences perception is an ongoing debate with a long history.

  • This issue should be viewed within the general framework of top-down information processing.

  • Such an approach leads to a reversal of the standard explanatory order.

  • Top-down processing within the visual system can serve as a model for higher-level influences.

  • From this perspective, the current evidence does not favour the cognitive impenetrability hypothesis.

Abstract

The question of whether cognition can influence perception has a long history in neuroscience and philosophy. Here, we outline a novel approach to this issue, arguing that it should be viewed within the framework of top-down information-processing. This approach leads to a reversal of the standard explanatory order of the cognitive penetration debate: we suggest studying top-down processing at various levels without preconceptions of perception or cognition. Once a clear picture has emerged about which processes have influences on those at lower levels, we can re-address the extent to which they should be considered perceptual or cognitive. Using top-down processing within the visual system as a model for higher-level influences, we argue that the current evidence indicates clear constraints on top-down influences at all stages of information processing; it does, however, not support the notion of a boundary between specific types of information-processing as proposed by the cognitive impenetrability hypothesis.

Introduction

One influential debate about perception concerns its purity: is perception an encapsulated process that is protected from influences by cognition or is perceptual bottom-up processing influenced by top-down cognitive information? This debate, which is frequently referred to as the ‘cognitive penetration debate’, is complicated by the fact that it is often not clear what kind of mental state is supposed to be doing the penetrating and what kind of mental state is supposed to be penetrated. In other words, it is not clear what is ‘top’ and what is ‘bottom’ in the debate about top-down influences on perception.

In the first part of this paper, we attempt to clarify some of these conceptual issues. We then proceed to suggest a practical alternative to the philosophical turf wars concerning the extent to which perception is encapsulated. We start with two uncontroversial observations: First, even the most avid proponents of the view that perception is cognitively impenetrable accept the existence of top-down processing within the visual system1; in other words, it is uncontroversial that higher-levels of visual processing feed back information to and shape lower-levels of visual processing (Pylyshyn, 1999). And second, the exact locus of the boundary between perception and cognition is notoriously difficult to determine (Bayne, 2009, Kriegel, 2007, Masrour, 2011, Nanay, 2011, Nanay, 2012, Nanay, 2013, Siegel, 2007, Siewert, 2002). On the basis of these two observations, we argue that important insights might be gained once we stop focusing exclusively on top-down modulation of perception by cognition; rather, we suggest that it is heuristically valuable to view this special case within the broader context of top-down influences in a hierarchically organised information processing system.

The general agreement concerning top-down processing within the visual system can be used as a starting point from which our understanding can be expanded to potential higher-level top-down influences without having to commit a priori to what exactly counts as perception or cognition. Once such an approach has been adopted, we can start asking nuanced questions about the specific mechanism of top-down modulation in information processing in general. Among other questions, we can ask what kinds of constraints exist on top-down influences between certain levels of processing and whether some of these constraints might amount to a full-blown boundary as proposed by the encapsulation hypothesis. According to our evaluation of the theoretical and empirical evidence, there is no reason to assume that top-down processing is restricted to specific parts of the information processing hierarchy. By contrast, we defend a view that puts clear constraints on all sorts of top-down processing – as well as on bottom-up processing – but that allows bidirectional flow of information between levels that some would consider to cross the perception-cognition divide.

Section snippets

Two debates about top-down influences on perception

The main conceptual confusion concerning debates about top-down influences on perception is that it is not clear what is meant by ‘perception’ in this context. Many philosophers (Macpherson, 2012, Siegel, 2011, Stokes, 2012), but also some psychologists (e.g., Firestone & Scholl, in press), take ‘perception’ to be perceptual experience: something we are consciously aware of. According to this conceptualisation, the question is whether top-down influences can alter the way we experience a scene

Cognitive penetration and top-down processing

We view the question of cognitive penetration as part of the wider research endeavour that attempts to understand top-down influences on perception. We believe that this perspective has various advantages over an exclusive focus on cognitive influences on perceptual processing. The most important benefit of such an approach is that it provides us with a framework that allows us to ask more nuanced questions: the question of top-down influences on perception is no longer a simple yes-no question

Top-down processing within the visual system

In the past decades, our understanding of the structural and functional organisation of visual systems in various mammalian species has improved dramatically and, in nonhuman and human primates, an increasing number of cortical areas dedicated to processing visual inputs has been and still is being characterised (for reviews see Bullier, 2004, Felleman and Van Essen, 1991, Grill-Spector and Malach, 2004, Katzner and Weigelt, 2013, Van Essen, 2004, Van Essen and Maunsell, 1983). In humans and

Top-down influences from outside the visual system

In recent years, several studies provided evidence to suggest that processing levels that most would consider to be outside the visual system can exert top-down influences on early vision. Here, we will discuss examples of how expectation and memory representations influence processing at early visual stages and we will argue that the function of such top-down effects can be readily understood in terms of the well-established processes discussed in the previous section.

Philosophers,

Conclusions

Humans and nonhuman primates live in a highly complex and ever-changing visual world. In order to deal with the resultant uncertainty and to generate adaptive representations that can guide successful behaviour, visual information processing is highly interactive with an important role for top-down influences from higher-level representations onto lower-level perceptual processing. While some of these higher-level representations can safely be considered to be perceptual – and the resultant

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the FWO Odysseus grant G.0020.12N and the FWO Research grant G0C7416N.

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