Semantic Priming effects on the Kanizsa Illusion: a case for cognitive penetrability

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4595714/v1

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Semantic Priming effects on the Kanizsa Illusion: a case for cognitive penetrability

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4595714/v1

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Visual illusions are considered key examples for cognitive impenetrability, as they are held not to be affected by non-perceptual processes. We revisit this claim in five experiments (N=1148; four preregistered) focused on the Kanizsa illusion, where a nonexistent shape is experienced within illusory contours. Pac-Man-like shapes inducing the illusion were presented after primes that were either semantically related to the Pac-Man game or not. We hypothesized that semantic primes would promote interpreting the shapes as individual Pac-Man characters, thus biasing participants away from the holistic Kanizsa illusion. Indeed, we found that the Kanizsa shape was detected less when participants were primed with Pac-Man-related stimuli. We then also demonstrated the opposite effect: a prime indexing the illusory shape (‘Triangle’) enhanced the probability of seeing the illusion. Together, our results suggest that semantic priming can both reduce and increase the probability of experiencing the Kanizsa illusion, thus supporting claims of cognitive penetrability.

Social science/Psychology/Human behaviour

Humanities/Philosophy

Cognitive Penetrability

Top-Down

Perception

Semantic Priming

Visual illusions

Kanizsa

Cognitive Encapsulation

‘Cognitive penetrability’ is the notion that higher mental states can affect perceptual processing ^1–3. Under this view, perception integrates both bottom-up (i.e., incoming input from the sensory stimuli) and top-down, non-perceptual factors (e.g., knowledge, motivations, beliefs, emotions, linguistic representations). Arguably, each percept thus combines the actual sensory properties of the stimulus with a variety of cognitive factors that affect the interpretation of these properties ^4,5. This view seems to align well with more recent ‘predictive coding’ accounts ^6,7, depicting the brain as a non-passive updating system that generates predictions about the world, based on inner schemes ^8,9. These predictions are continuously updated through feedforward and feedback connections ^7,10 and are reflected in processes of neural re-organization and synapse strength modulation ^11,12. And so, some claim that we continuously “hallucinate reality” in a controlled manner, rather than accurately reflect the external world as it is ¹³. Indeed, many studies demonstrated different types of top-down effects on perception (for reviews see ^1,14), held to be more pronounced when the physical stimulus is degraded or ambiguous (e.g., ^15,16).

Yet, some still strongly deny that perception can be cognitively penetrated ¹⁷, supporting a modular view according to which perception is encapsulated from cognition ^18,19. Under this view, demonstrations of cognitive penetrability suffer from methodological limitations ^17,20,21. Arguably, when these are accounted for, the results no longer support cognitive penetrability (though see ^22–24). This question has far reached implications, not only for resolving the ongoing philosophical and psychological controversy ³, but also for theories of consciousness, some of which are strongly committed to cognitive impenetrability (e.g., recurrent processing ²⁵).

Typically, visual illusions are presented as a definitive case in point in favor of the impenetrability approach ^26,27. Although illusions commonly emerge given a discrepancy between the visual input and certain expectations we have about the world, knowledge about them being illusions does not affect perception or abolish the illusion. Thus, illusions pose an interesting test case to the claim that cognition can affect perception. Can they be altered by a cognitive state? Thus far, such alterations have scarcely been demonstrated: two studies focused on the motion illusion induced by Ternus sequences ²⁸, where three distinct images of a dot in three locations yield the false perception of the dot moving. In one study, the type of motion was slightly affected by the dots being interpreted as feet or as wheels of a car ²⁹. In another study, the dots were replaced with frogs that were either facing the direction of the movement or opposite of it; the illusion of Element motion was reduced in the latter case, arguably due to real-life knowledge about frogs leaping only forward ³⁰. Notably however, both studies demonstrated a modulation of the illusion, biasing perception towards group over element motion. No study to date has shown that participants might even not see an illusion altogether due to semantic activation of relevant concepts.

In the current study, we accordingly set to examine if a well-known and highly robust visual illusion - the Kanizsa illusion ³¹ – could be abolished in some participants following semantic priming. In the Kanizsa illusion, contextual inducers are organized in a way that evokes the perception of illusory shape contours, though no explicit lines or enclosed spaces appear. We used a specific variant of the illusion, where the contextual inducers resemble the cartoon character from the video game ‘Pac-Man’ (see Fig. 1). We accordingly presented either a Pac-Man-related prime or a neutral prime prior to the Kanizsa display, under the assumption that the former would bias participants towards perceiving the sliced circles as individual Pac-Man figures, hereby reducing the chances of them being grouped together to form the contour of a Kanizsa triangle. This hypothesis was tested in a series of five preregistered experiments. In all experiments, an array that either included a Kanizsa triangle or not was displayed, preceded by either a semantic or a meaningless prime (Fig. 1). We show that participants can indeed be semantically primed against seeing the Kanizsa shape (Experiments 1, 3 and 4), and that this result cannot be explained by attentional engagement of a meaningful prime (Experiment 2). Then, the final experiment (Experiment 5) demonstrated that semantic priming can even enhance the probability of perceiving a Kanizsa shape, showing that illusory perception can be both hindered and augmented by a semantic prime.

We calculated the percentage of correct and wrong answers in each prime group. In experiments 1–4, a “correct answer” was an answer that matched the Kanizsa display type (i.e., for the Kanizsa display, reports of ‘triangle’ are considered correct and reports of ‘square’ or ‘no shape’ wrong, while for the no-Kanizsa display, ‘no-shape’ is considered correct and the others wrong). In experiment 5, where the Kanizsa triangle could appear either on the left side or the right side, a “correct answer” is one that matches the location in which the Kanizsa display appeared. Reaction times (RT) were also analyzed, yet with no prior hypothesis as this was not a speeded task. Indeed, no substantial effects were found in RT, and we focus here on the analyses of correct responses (but see Supplementary materials for RT results).

In Experiment 1, when a triangle Kanizsa display was presented, participants who received a Pac-Man gameboard prime were less than half as likely to report seeing a triangle than participants who were primed with a scrambled version of the same gameboard (42.9% vs. 87.8% respectively; \({\chi }^{2}\)(1, N = 98) = 21.80; p < 0.001, \(\phi\) = 0.472). These findings were supported by Bayesian analysis, providing extreme evidence for a presence of an effect³² (\({BF}_{10}\) = 18248.884). In the control condition, in which a no-Kanizsa display was presented, there was no difference between the groups in accuracy (i.e., reporting no shape; Pac-Man prime: 32.7%, scrambled prime: 54%; \({\chi }^{2}\)(1, N = 102) = 4.72; p = 0.654, \(\phi\) = 0.215, though with an inconclusive \({BF}_{10}\) = 2.473). A post-hoc analysis showed that the semantic prime actually reduced seeing the Kanizsa to the same degree as when no Kanizsa shape was even displayed (reporting seeing nothing in the Kanizsa display with the Pac-Man prime vs. in the no-Kanizsa display with the Pac-Man prime: 28.6% vs. 32.7%; \({\chi }^{2}\)(1, N = 101) = 0.20; p = 0.654, \(\phi\) = -0.045, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.249), suggesting that the semantic prime abolished the illusion altogether.

Yet an alternative interpretation is that participants failed to see the shape not due to the semantic activation evoked by the prime, but due to attentional engagement by the prime image ³³. Possibly, as the prime gameboard was more interesting than its scrambled version, it might have engaged participant’s attention, leaving too few resources to detect the upcoming Kanizsa shape within the rich, crowded display. To test this interpretation, in Experiment 2 the prime was either an unrelated image (a gift box), created to resemble the gameboard used in Experiment 1 in terms of color and usage of dots, or a scrambled version of that image. Here, participants were as likely to provide an accurate answer when the triangle Kanizsa display was presented (gift box prime: 82.7%; scrambled prime: 82.4%; \({\chi }^{2}\)(1, N = 103) < 0.01; p = 0.964, \(\phi\) = -0.004, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.185) and when it was not (gift box prime: 59.6%; scrambled prime: 52.0%; \({\chi }^{2}\)(1, N = 97) = 0.56; p = 0.453, \(\phi\) = -0.076, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.326). This result suggests that the effects found in Experiment 1 could not be easily explained by the mere meaningfulness of the prime, but rather that they depend on the meaning of that prime being related to the Pac-Man game.

Next, we tested if the effect can be evoked also by a verbal prime, to exclude any possibility that priming was driven by some perceptual features. In Experiment 3, the prime was accordingly the Hebrew word “פקמן” (Pac-Man), or a corresponding non-word “פלמן” (Pal-Man). Again, an effect was found, such that when a Kanizsa triangle display was presented, participants in the Pac-Man word prime group were less likely to report seeing a triangle than in the non-word prime group (46.0% vs. 88.2% respectively; \({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 101) = 20.47; p < 0.001, \(\phi\) = 0.450, \({BF}_{10}\) = 8651.865). Again, no difference in accuracy was found in the control condition, which contained no Kanizsa illusion (Pac-Man word prime: 40.0%, non-word prime: 44.9%; \({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 99) = 0.24; p = 0.622, \(\phi\) = 0.050, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.274).

Experiment 4 was a successful replication of Experiment 3: under the Kanizsa display, only 40.8% of participants reported a triangle following the Pac-Man word prime, compared to 88.5% following the non-word prime (\({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 101) = 25.29; p < 0.001, \(\phi\) = 0.500, \({BF}_{10}\) = 112043.032), while no difference was found under the no-Kanizsa display (Pac-Man word prime: 40.8%, non-word prime: 44%; \({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 99) = 0.10; p = 0.749, \(\phi\) = 0.032, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.256).

Finally, in Experiment 5 we set to examine if the effect can be reversed, so to enhance the tendency to see the Kanizsa shape following a congruent word prime indexing the expected shape (‘Triangle’), as compared to an incongruent one indexing a different shape (‘Square’), or a non-word. To make sure we are indeed probing Kanizsa perception and not simple response priming, here the task was not to report which shape, if at all, was present, but to detect if it appeared to the right or to the left side of the fixation cross. We reasoned that if priming increased illusory perception, participants will be more likely to correctly detect the shape location. This was indeed the case (\({\chi }^{2}\) (2, N = 348) = 18.28; p < 0.001, Cramer’s V = 0.229, \({BF}_{10}\) = 167.035; Fig. 3). Post-hoc analyses showed that participants had higher accuracy in the congruent group compared with the incongruent group (50.0% vs. 24.1%, respectively; \({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 232) = 16.63; p < 0.001, \(\phi\) = -0.268, \({BF}_{10}\) = 674.715), and also compared with the non-word group (31%; \({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 232) = 8.66; p = 0.005, \(\phi\) = -0.193, \({BF}_{10}\) = 12.021). Accuracy was not found to differ between the non-word group and the incongruent group (\({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 232) = 1.38; p = 0.240, \(\phi\) = -0.077, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.289). It was also not found to be modulated by the side of the Kanizsa display (\({\chi }^{2}\) (1, N = 348) < 0.01, p = 1.000, \(\phi\) < 0.001, \({BF}_{10}\) = 0.127).

Taken together, the results of the five experiments we conducted reveal a surprisingly strong phenomenon whereby the likelihood of seeing the Kanizsa illusion is either reduced or enhanced by semantic priming. Though there is some evidence for a modulatory effect of priming on illusory perception ^29,30, to our knowledge this is the first study to demonstrate an abolishment on an illusion due to priming. This suggests that visual illusions are not as impervious to cognition as previously thought ^26,27, challenging claims of cognitive impenetrability^17–19 and supporting the role of top-down knowledge-based processes in perception ^8,34–37, in line with predictive processing accounts ^38,39.

Can the current findings be criticized on the same methodological grounds directed at previous demonstrations of top-down effects ^17,21? In our case, we tested both confirmatory and disconformity predictions, showing that the effect also disappears when an irrelevant prime is used (Experiment 2). Second, to minimize the role of post-perceptual judgments, the stimuli were briefly presented, and the task (choosing a shape) directly examined perception (there was an objectively ‘correct’ answer to choose from three alternatives). Third, to avoid demand and response biases, our manipulation was not apparent, and each participant completed only one trial, thereby not knowing in advance what the question would be. Fourth, special care was taken to control for potential low-level confounds, both when designing the control conditions and the irrelevant prime in Experiment 2. Fifth, memory effects were minimized by immediately probing participants’ perception after the display has been presented. Lastly, we showed that our effect cannot be simply explained by attentional engagement that is irrelevant to the semantic prime. Notably though, we concede that it might be mediated by some form of feature-based attention ⁴⁰, guiding participants to perceive the global Kanizsa figure or, alternatively, the local inducers ^14,41,42. Yet from our perspective, even if this is the case, this would not be a confound but rather part of the mechanism by which cognition affected perception ^14,43, which is in line with similar views in the field ^1,26,44.

Naturally, the current study is not free of limitations and outstanding issues. For example, the Kanizsa detection percentage in experiment 5 is lower than those of experiment 1–4, despite sharing similar stimuli. This might stem from the different task, or from the fact that Experiment 5 was conducted online rather than in person, which was the case in Experiments 1–4. Another, more puzzling result pertains to the tendency of a relatively large proportion of participants to report seeing a shape (triangle/square) even for the no-Kanizsa display. This response might be driven by demand characteristics ⁴⁵ – that is, participants’ assumption that they are expected to see something (as the question “which shape did you see?” already contains a bias), leading them to guess that one of the shape options is more feasible than the option of no shape at all. It is also possible that the no-Kanizsa display we used gave rise to some unplanned shapes, despite our efforts to design it otherwise. This echoes the well-established tendency to see shapes and patterns, even in meaningless stimuli ⁴⁶. Thus, the field will benefit from additional studies using different stimuli to further investigate the possible susceptibility of the Kanizsa illusion to top-down effects of cognition.

Open science practices

Four out of the five experiments were preregistered (Exp. 1–3, and 5; Exp. 4 was also meant to be preregistered, and a preregistration file had been prepared prior to running the experiment, but the file was not uploaded to OSF due to a technical error. It has now been added to the OSF page). The preregistration files, materials, data and analysis codes are all available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/wmak2/.

Participants

Overall, 1,148 participants were included in this study over the five experiments. For experiments 1–4, 200 participants were required to provide power higher than 0.99, considering a medium effect size of 0.25 and a standard 0.05 alpha (calculated using the G*Power software). This was therefore the sample size used in the four experiments (Experiment 1: 88 identified as female, 112 identified as male; age 18–35, M = 25.9, SD = 4.4. Experiment 2: 106 identified as female, 94 identified as male, age 18–35, M = 25.2, SD = 4.2. Experiment 3: 97 identified as female, 103 identified as male; age 18–35, M = 24.6, SD = 3.6. Experiment 4: 78 identified as female, 122 identified as male; age 18–35, M = 25.4, SD = 3.6). Twenty-one additional participants were excluded from analysis due to extreme RT (seven from Experiment 1, two from Experiment 2, four from Experiment 3 and eight from Experiment 4; see Exclusion Criteria below), and one (from Experiment 4) due to technical issues during the experiment.

For Experiment 5, 348 participants were required, as it included three experimental groups. Here, power analysis was conducted using the R ‘powerAnalysis’ package, with the “power.chisq” function and an effect size of 0.25, power of 0.99, 2 degrees of freedom and an alpha of 0.05. The sample size accordingly included 348 participants (213 identified as female, 133 identified as male, 2 identified as other; age 18–35, M = 28.9, SD = 4.6). Six additional participants were excluded due to extreme RT.

Participants in experiments 1–4 were all Hebrew speakers, with normal or corrected-to-normal vision, approached at public places. Participation was on a voluntary basis (no payment was offered). Participants signed an informed consent, as approved by the Tel Aviv University ethics-committee. Due to COVID-19, participants in experiment 5 were recruited remotely, using Amazon Mechanical Turk (Mturk), for a payment of 0.4 USD. These participants were all English speakers, who met the following criteria: HIT approval rate greater than 98, number of HITs approved greater than 500, and age between 18–35. They were required to perform the experiment on the Qualtrics platform on a PC.

Condition X group allocation was pseudo-random: it was pre-assigned internally to each participant number (unbeknownst to the experimenter), making sure that there would be a roughly equal number of participants in each group.

Exclusion Criteria

Mean RT was calculated for each group (irrespective of answer). Participants with RTs that diverged from the average RT of their group by three standard deviations (+ 3/-3) or more were excluded from further analysis, as reported above.

Stimuli

The test displays contained 24 sliced yellow circles (“Pac-Man” characters). In the triangle Kanizsa display, three of them were arranged to create an illusionary triangle ³¹. In the No-Kanizsa display, the same sliced circles were rotated in a way that creates no illusory Kanizsa shape. To avoid low-level differences between the displays, we equated the number of pixels of each color using a MATLAB code. Several pilot experiments were conducted to ensure that the Kanizsa display is indeed effective (i.e., the shape is detected by at least 75% of the viewers). Because the study was conducted outside the lab while participants were standing, their head was not fixed and their viewing distance somewhat varied around ~ 50 cm.

Based on the pilot experiments, the illusory triangle’s sides were set to be 3.9 x 3.4 x 3.4 cm (4.5\(^\circ x\) 3.9\(^\circ x 3.9^\circ\) visual angles). It was positioned a bit over the vertical center of the screen (8.6\(^\circ\)from the bottom of the screen, 7.2\(^\circ\) from the top) and in the left of the horizontal center (11.1\(^\circ\) from the left screen border, 17.2\(^\circ\) from the right). Other sliced circles were at least 1cm (1.1\(^\circ\) visual angles) distant from the three Kanizsa inducing circles. The background of the pictures and instructions was black. The instructions’ letters were white, written in Hebrew, in David font.

The Pac-Man prime in Experiment 1 was a screenshot taken from the ‘Pac-Man’ video game, presenting a Pac-Man gameboard maze. The Pac-Man character itself was removed from the picture to prime only the general context of the game. The non-semantic ‘scrambled’ prime was a scrambled version of the Pac-Man display picture, created using Adobe Photoshop CC2018’s ‘Scramble’ filter. Tile parameters were 0.52cm height and 0.52cm width (20px x 20px or 0.6\(^\circ\) x 0.6\(^\circ\) visual angles).

The gift box prime in Experiment 2 was created using elements from the Pac-Man prime, aiming to obtain similar colors and style (cartoon). The number of color pixels in both primes was equated using a MATLAB code, to reduce low-level differences between the two primes. The display’s background was black and the gift box (which was 3D-shaped, with 10.9\(^\circ x\) 14.3\(^\circ x10.3^\circ\)dimensions) appeared in the middle of the screen. A pre-test was conducted to ensure that the new display did not remind participants of the Pac-Man videogame. The non-semantic scrambled display was a scrambled version of the gift box prime, created in the same manner as in Experiment 1.

The prime words in Experiments 3 and 4 were the Hebrew word for Pac-Man (פקמן) and a non-word “Pal-Man”, created by switching one letter (ק) with another letter (ל), following ⁴⁷. The displays’ background was black, the letters were white, and were written in David font. The words (10.9\(^\circ x\) 14.3) appeared in the middle of the screen.

In Experiment 5, three primes were used: ‘Triangle’ served as a congruent semantic prime, ‘Square’ as an incongruent semantic prime, and ‘Tsianmle’ as a non-word prime (made by switching the triangle letters (r, g) with the letters (s, m), to create a meaningless word). The displays’ background was black and the letters were white in David font. The words (10.9\(^\circ x\) 14.3\(^\circ\)) appeared in the middle of the screen. The Kanizsa display used in Experiment 1 was used here as the left-side triangle Kanizsa display. The same display flipped horizontally was used to create a second Kanizsa display, in which the Kanizsa triangle appeared on the right side.

Apparatus

Experiments 1–4 were presented on a HZ0010 HooZo 10.1” tablet screen, using an Android application (operating with Android version 8.1.0). The experimental code was written using Java and JavaScript. Participants’ responses were given by a tap on the intended touchscreen buttons. During the experiments, the tablet was in an arm-length distance (i.e., approximately 50 cm) from the participant’s face, held slightly lower than eye-level, with an estimated visual angle of 15.0\(^\circ\) \(x\) 25.7\(^\circ\). These viewing parameters allow participants to see the entire screen, aiming to reach a standardized visual field.

Procedure

Experiments 1–4 were conducted outside the lab, in natural environments. Participants were standing, and held the experiment tablet themselves. Experiment 5 was carried out online. In all five experiments, after giving their informed consent by selecting the ‘I give my consent’ option, participants were given short written instructions, explaining that two pictures would be briefly presented, followed by a related question. The participants were asked to focus on the fixation symbol in the middle of the screen (a red cross) throughout the experiment. They were further instructed to look carefully at the following pictures and answer the question as accurately and as quickly as they could.

The experiment began when the participants pressed the ‘start the experiment’ button. A 1200 ms 3-2-1 countdown appeared (each digit was presented for 400ms), preparing participants for the upcoming presentation of the stimuli. This was followed by a black screen with the fixation in the middle, presented for 300 ms. Afterwards, one of the prime displays (semantic/non-semantic in Experiments 1–4, congruent/incongruent/non-word in Experiment 5) appeared for 1000 ms, followed by one of the test displays (Kanizsa display/no-Kanizsa display in Experiments 1–4, Kanizsa on the right/left in Experiment 5) which was presented for 800 ms. Then, another black screen with a fixation in the middle was presented for 100 ms. Subsequently, in Experiments 1–4, an answer displays appeared until the participant tapped on one of the answer option-buttons to the question “What shape did you see?”. There were three answer options: Triangle - represented by a triangle Kanizsa drawing, Square - represented by a square Kanizsa drawing, and an “I didn’t see any shape” option. In Experiment 5, participants were asked “on which side did the shape appear?”. The following options were given: “Left”, “Right” and “I didn’t see any shape”. The options were ordered in one of two orders (either “Left”, “Right”, “I didn’t see any shape”, or the other way around), counterbalanced between participants. RT was measured from the time the question was presented until selecting one of the three buttons. After completing the trial, participants were asked to fill their age (in digits) and to choose their gender (Female/Male/Other). Each participant completed one trial. The entire experiment took approximately 2 minutes.

Analysis

Results were analyzed using Chi tests. Multiple comparisons were corrected for using the Tree Benjamini-Hochberg (TreeBH) method ⁴⁸. TreeBH takes into account the dependency structure of all the analyses of the manuscript (see Figure S2 in Supplementary Material), and corrects p-values and alpha levels per family of analyses in a hierarchical manner. All p-values were corrected using the Simes method, assigning p-values to higher levels of the analyses based on the corrected p-values of their lower-level descendent analyses, as this method provides higher power. Note that we do not apply this correction if it turns a non-significant result into a significant one (which did not happen in the current paper). All p-values reported in the paper are corrected p-values. The effect sizes of Chi tests are reported using φ and Cramer’s V for tests of a 2X2 structure or larger, respectively.

In addition to these Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) methods, we analyzed our results in a Bayesian manner as well. Bayes Factors (BF) were calculated using Bayesian contingency table analysis in JASP software. We adopted the convention that a BF less than 0.1 implies strong evidence for the lack of an effect (i.e., H₀ is at least 10 times more likely than H₁ given the data), a BF between 0.1 and 0.33 provides moderate evidence for the lack of an effect, a BF between 0.33 and 3 suggests insensitivity of the data (anecdotal evidence for the lack or presence of an effect, for 0.33 < BF < 1 or 1 < BF < 3, respectively), a BF between 3 and 10 denotes moderate evidence for the presence of an effect (i.e., H₁), a BF between 10 and 100 implies strong evidence, and a BF greater than 100 suggests extreme evidence for the presence of an effect ³².

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Semantic Priming effects on the Kanizsa Illusion: a case for cognitive penetrability

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