Correlations Between Hysteretic Categorical and Continuous Judgments of Perceptual Stimuli Supporting a Unified Dynamical Systems Approach to Perception

Abstract

We report from two variants of a figure-ground experiment that is known in the literature to involve a bistable perceptual domain. The first variant was conducted as a two-alternative forced-choice experiment and in doing so tested participants on a categorical measurement scale. The second variant involved a Likert scale measure that was considered to represent a continuous measurement scale. The two variants were conducted as a single within-subjects experiment. Measures of bistability operationalized in terms of hysteresis size scores showed significant positive correlations across the two response conditions. The experimental findings are consistent with a dualistic interpretation of self-organizing perceptual systems when they are described on a macrolevel by means of so-called amplitude equations. This is explicitly demonstrated for a Lotka–Volterra–Haken amplitude equation model of task-related brain activity. As a by-product, the proposed dynamical systems perspective also sheds new light on the anchoring problem of producing numerical, continuous judgments.