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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 9080-9085 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 102 |
Issue number | 25 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 21 2005 |
Keywords
- Learning
- Motion
- Plasticity vision
- Psychophysics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General