Serial dependence is stronger for peripheral than for central vision

Serial dependence in vision refers to the fact that perceptual judgements are biased by earlier experiences, and has been thought to reduce sensory uncertainty and sustain perceptual continuity over time and space. While vision changes with eccentricity, little is known about if and how serial dependence differs in the periphery relative to fovea. Here we aimed to reduce this gap by comparing serial dependence for centrally and peripherally presented stimuli. Experiment 1 presents a reanalysis of an existing dataset from an earlier working memory task requiring the memorization of differently oriented gratings, presented either centrally or at 15° eccentricity. Experiment 2 also varied pre-knowledge of the item's location through spatial cueing. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 but with lower contrast levels and equating the probabilities of central and peripheral stimuli. Across all experiments we observed an attractive bias towards the orientation of the preceding trial at all locations. Crucially, this bias was always larger in the periphery relative to the central position, and it was mainly the current item's location that drove this effect, rather than the previous item's location. Pre-knowledge of item location failed to influence the eccentricity effect serial dependence, nor did reduced contrast or differential probabilities change the conclusions. Our results thus demonstrate that serial dependence is not equal across eccentricity. The data and the scripts are available at: https://osf.io/v56hn/?view_only=6d4d5bba493b4bc788c3eed8decd8370.