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Updated: Aug 17, 2026

A Gaze-Contingent Display Framework for Perceptual Learning Research with Simulated Central Vision Loss
Published on: April 11, 2025
Seeing what is not there shows the costs of perceptual learning
Aaron R Seitz1, Jose E Nanez, Steven R Holloway
1Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA. aseitz@bu.edu
Abstract:
Perceptual learning is an improvement in one's sensory abilities after training and is thought to help us to better adapt to the sensory environment. Here, we show that perceptual learning also can lead to misperceptions, such that subjects actually perceive stimuli when none are physically presented. After learning, subjects not only showed enhanced performance when tested with the motion direction of the trained stimulus but also often reported seeing dots moving in the trained direction when no stimulus was displayed. We further show that these misperceptions are not attributable to a response bias. These results show that there are costs as well as benefits to perceptual learning and that performance enhancements for a specific feature also can be accompanied by misperceptions of the visual environment.
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