A large positive hysteresis effect for scene categories

Seamless visual perception is achieved through the balance between recent perceptual history and ongoing sensory evidence. This balance has been examined under the framework of perceptual hysteresis, in which the visual system either favors perceptual history to maintain stability (positive hysteresis) or favors current sensory input to accommodate important changes in the environment (negative hysteresis). However, it remains unclear which direction of hysteresis prevails when recognizing semantic categories in changing scenes. Here, we investigate hysteresis using smoothly transitioning scene-image sequences generated by a generative adversarial network. Each sequence was presented in two opposite directions between two scene categories (e.g., bedroom vs. living room), and participants indicated the frame at which they perceived the category change in each direction. Compared with the estimated true category boundary, responses were systematically delayed, indicating that perceived boundaries were biased toward the recently perceived category. This positive hysteresis effect was robust across transition directions, even after accounting for motor response time (Experiment 1) and manipulating prior expectations of upcoming categories (Experiment 2). Together, these findings extend evidence for positive hysteresis to complex, naturalistic scenes, highlighting its role as a stability-promoting process that supports coherent interpretation in continuous vision. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).