Biology subjects

Ward, E. K.

Publications and source records attributed to Ward, E. K..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Autistic and non-autistic adults similarly experience statistical regularities

Bayesian accounts of autism propose that perception is less influenced by prior expectations and more strongly driven by incoming sensory information in autistic than non-autistic individuals, with this altered balance cascading through the cognitive hierarchy to also influence higher cognitive functions. However, empirical support for these accounts remains mixed. Previous work has mostly tested these ideas in the context of objective environmental statistics, but recent work suggests that it may be subjective experience of structure, rather than structure itself, that shapes perceptual processing. Characterising these subjective experiences in autistic individuals is therefore crucial for understanding predictive processing in autism. In the present study, we thus examined subjective experience of statistical structure in autistic and non-autistic adults and tested how this experience relates to perceptual decisions. Participants were exposed to statistical regularities between action cues and visual stimuli (shapes), and we measured their speed and accuracy in reporting which shape they had seen. At the end of the study, participants were asked to estimate the probability and rate their surprise for each action-shape combination. Autistic and non-autistic participants showed similar subjective probability and surprise ratings and a comparable relationship between these ratings and perceptual decisions. Across participants, subjective ratings explained perceptual decisions better than objective structure. Together, these findings show that autistic and non-autistic adults experience statistical structure similarly, with these experiences exerting a similar influence on perceptual decisions - therefore suggesting that subjective experience plays a comparable role in predictive processing in autistic and non-autistic adults. Lay summaryOur brains constantly learn patterns from past experience - for example, that dark clouds are often followed by rain - and use this knowledge to predict and interpret what we see. We studied how autistic and non-autistic adults experience these learned patterns by asking them how likely and surprising they found different events. We found that both groups gave similar ratings, and that these experiences shaped perception in similar ways.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Gravitational expectations simultaneously attract and repel perception

Perception is typically biased towards prior expectations. In some cases, however, it seems repelled away from expectations, such that percepts appear less like what is expected. Even more intriguingly, separate studies have recently reported that predictions derived from gravity may shape perception in opposing ways. Specifically, gravity causes unsupported objects to accelerate downwards, leading to two predictions; that objects will move downwards (location prior) and at an increasing speed (acceleration prior). There is evidence that perceptual judgements are attracted towards location priors yet repelled from acceleration ones. Here we examine these effects in the same paradigm to determine whether they result from different types of stimuli and judgement, or more interestingly, might result from opposite influences of common predictive mechanisms influencing perception. We first replicate previous reports of a systematic bias to report upward moving objects as more accelerating than downward moving objects: effectively a repulsion from acceleration priors. We then show that the effect applies both at the level of retinal space and due to contextual cues concerning gravitational direction. Finally, we find that participants errors in a location reproduction task are similarly consistent with a repulsion from acceleration priors and, simultaneously, with an attraction towards location priors. We conclude by considering the ways in which these concurrent attractive and repulsive biases may reflect mechanisms optimising fast, accurate, and informative experiences in our ever-changing sensory world, therefore optimising the interface between perception and learning. Public Significance StatementIn a series of behavioural experiments, we show that expectations about how objects move due to gravity concurrently attract perception towards the prediction that objects move downwards, and repel perception away from the prediction that they do so at an increasing rate. These opposing influences inform current theories of perceptual processing, which explain how expectations may generate percepts that are fast, veridical, and informative.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Perceptual predictions track subjective, over objective, statistical structure

Over the past two decades, converging evidence from neuroscience and psychology has shown that predictions based on learnt statistical regularities exert a widespread influence on perception, action and cognition. Predictive processes in cognition and the brain are usually modelled as tracking objective event probabilities, deriving predictions and prediction errors from the statistical structure of the environment. However, our subjective models of our environments do not always align with these objective statistics. Currently we know little about how these subjective representations may determine the predictive functions. To separate subjective and objective contributions to prediction, we conducted three studies where cues (actions or tones) predicted visual outcomes (shapes or Gabors) with varying contingencies, and adult participants discriminated these outcomes. Uniquely to our paradigm, participants also reported their experiences of the statistical structure embedded in the task - the subjective probability (Experiment 1; N = 68), expectedness (Experiment 2; N = 35), or surprise (Experiment 3; N = 35) associated with the outcomes. When modelling subjective ratings alongside objective structure, the speed of perceptual decisions was best explained by independent, additive contributions of both. The decision itself was usually only explained by the subjective ratings, with little additional variance explained by objective statistical structure. These findings suggest that subjective experience may play a key, overlooked role in predictive processes, and open a host of interesting questions about the relative objective and subjective contributions to prediction, perception, and learning.

animal behavior and cognition↗