What Determines How We Resolve Ambiguous Perceptions?

Joel Yager, MD

Resolving visual ambiguities related to biological entities, and not things, seems to be strongly shaped by genetically transmitted influences.

Situations demanding interpretations of ambiguous circumstances are ubiquitous, but individuals vary considerably in how they resolve these ambiguities. Differences in the ways people disambiguate stimuli have largely been thought to be explained by dissimilarities in their prior experiences. To ascertain how much genetics might also shape disambiguation, investigators in China studied 82 monozygotic and 78 dizygotic twin pairs as they interpreted ambiguous animations presented on a computer screen.

One series of tests presented the barest outline of a moving human figure, as defined by 15 points of light; participants noted whether the figure seemed to be approaching or receding. In another series, the point-light outlines were of an inanimate object, a rotating sphere; participants noted whether it seemed to rotate to the left or right. In both series (40 trials each), the illusion of movement could have easily and equally been interpreted in either direction.

Responses as to the direction of movement of the seemingly human figure were highly genetically associated (correlations: monozygotic pairs, 0.56; dizygotic pairs, 0.31; estimated heritability, 54%). Findings were similar in a separate series on the perceived stability of direction of movement (0.31 and 0.07; estimated heritability, 26%). No genetic effects were seen in disambiguation of inanimate movements.

Citation(s):

Wang Y et al. Domain-specific genetic influence on visual-ambiguity resolution. Psychol Sci 2014 Jun 9; [e-pub ahead of print].