Do we see it or not? Sensory attenuation in the visual domain

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Perception

Background:

• Sensory attenuation, the reduced perception of self-caused stimuli, is theorized to be crucial for agency and distinguishing self-generated from external sensory input.
• While well-documented in auditory and tactile domains, empirical evidence for visual sensory attenuation remains sparse and inconsistent.
• This phenomenon is thought to involve predictive coding mechanisms, where the brain predicts sensory consequences of actions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To rigorously investigate the presence and extent of sensory attenuation in the visual domain concerning learned action effects.
• To replicate and validate findings from a key prior study (Cardoso-Leite et al., 2010) on visual sensory attenuation.
• To clarify the role of sensory attenuation as a fundamental principle of visual perception and action.

Main Methods:

• Conducted three high-powered experiments, including direct and conceptual replications, to assess visual sensory attenuation.
• Employed signal detection analyses to differentiate between changes in visual sensitivity and response bias.
• Utilized Bayesian analyses to evaluate the evidence for or against the existence of sensory attenuation.

Main Results:

• Despite high statistical power, no evidence for sensory attenuation of learned visual action effects was found across the experiments.
• Bayesian analyses provided support for the null hypothesis, indicating a lack of a sensory attenuation effect.
• Results challenge the assumption that sensory attenuation is an immediate and necessary consequence of voluntary actions in the visual domain.

Conclusions:

• The findings suggest that sensory attenuation may not be a ubiquitous or automatic consequence of voluntary actions in the visual system.
• Current theoretical models may need refinement regarding the role and necessity of sensory attenuation for visual perception and agency.
• Further research is needed to understand the precise mechanisms underlying the perception of self-caused visual events.