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Central tendency biases must be accounted for to consistently capture Bayesian cue combination in continuous response data

Aston, S; Negen, J; Nardini, M; Beierholm, U

Central tendency biases must be accounted for to consistently capture Bayesian cue combination in continuous response data Thumbnail


Authors

S Aston

J Negen



Abstract

Observers in perceptual tasks are often reported to combine multiple sensory cues in a weighted average that improves precision – in some studies, approaching statistically-optimal (Bayesian) weighting, but in others departing from optimality, or not benefitting from combined cues at all. To correctly conclude which combination rules observers use, it is crucial to have accurate measures of their sensory precision and cue weighting. Here, we present a new approach for accurately recovering these parameters in perceptual tasks with continuous responses. Continuous responses have many advantages, but are susceptible to a central tendency bias, where responses are biased towards the central stimulus value. We show such biases lead to inaccuracies in estimating both precision gains and cue weightings, two key measures used to assess sensory cue combination. We introduce a method that estimates sensory precision by regressing continuous responses on targets and dividing the variance of the residuals by the squared slope of the regression line, “correcting-out” the error introduced by the central bias and increasing statistical power. We also suggest a complementary analysis that recovers the sensory cue weights. Using both simulations and empirical data, we show that the proposed methods can accurately estimate sensory precision and cue weightings in the presence of central tendency biases. We conclude that central tendency biases should be (and can easily be) accounted for to consistently capture Bayesian cue combination in continuous response data.

Citation

Aston, S., Negen, J., Nardini, M., & Beierholm, U. (2022). Central tendency biases must be accounted for to consistently capture Bayesian cue combination in continuous response data. Behavior Research Methods, 54(1), 508-521. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01633-2

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date May 18, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 13, 2021
Publication Date 2022-02
Deposit Date May 27, 2021
Publicly Available Date Jul 14, 2021
Journal Behavior Research Methods
Print ISSN 1554-351X
Electronic ISSN 1554-3528
Publisher Psychonomic Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 54
Issue 1
Pages 508-521
DOI https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01633-2
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1241878

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.






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