Evaluating cognitive penetrability of perception across the senses

Abstract

A central question about the human mind is whether perception is an encapsulated process driven purely by sensory information or whether it is intricately linked with cognitive processes. This debate about the cognitive penetrability of perception is discussed in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy. Thus far, the debate has centred on vision, without major attempts to examine other senses. In this Review, we provide an overview of the key empirical evidence about cognitive penetrability of perception in vision, audition, somatosensation (including proprioception and pain perception), vestibular perception and chemosensation (gustation, chemesthesis and olfaction). We conclude that many (but not all) of the senses are cognitively penetrable. Specifically, cognitive penetrability seems to vary with the extent to which a sense is intrinsically multimodal, the extent to which it receives indirect cognitive influences, and whether hedonic evaluation is an integral aspect of the perceptual experience. We suggest that the debate about cognitive penetrability needs to be more differentiated with respect to the sensory modality of the perceptual experience and the diversity of cognitive influences on that modality. The debate over cognitive penetrability of perception, which has been largely limited to vision, remains unsolved; in this Review, Vetter and colleagues detail cognitive influences on perception across vision, audition, somatosensation, vestibular perception and chemosensation to advance the debate.