title: How to tell a wife from a hat: affective feedback in perceptual categorization.
abstract: How do people understand that their perception is correct? In line with the recurring idea of perception as prediction, the affective feedback account of hypotheses testing suggests that correct perceptual predictions are reinforced with positive affect. In four experiments, we tested whether correct categorization of a degraded image will lead to more positive liking ratings. The obtained findings supported the proposed approach: subjects liked the images they were able to perceive correctly more than others. Importantly, these findings were independent of the initial affective valence of stimuli. A further investigation demonstrated that this effect exists only when answers are at least moderately confident. The obtained findings add to the growing amount of literature on the role of affect in basic cognitive processing.
authors: Department of Psychology, Saint Petersburg State University, 6 Makarova emb., Saint Petersburg 191002, Russia. Electronic address: a.chetverikov@psy.spbu.ru.
authors: Andrey
authors: A
authors: Chetverikov
authors: Department of Psychology, Saint Petersburg State University, 6 Makarova emb., Saint Petersburg 191002, Russia. Electronic address: margarita.g.filippova@gmail.com.
authors: Margarita
authors: M
authors: Filippova
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D030141:Feedback, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affective feedback; Ambiguity; Categorization; Errors; Gestalt; Perceptual hypotheses