Continuity fields enhance visual perception through positive serial dependence

Positive serial dependencies are phenomena in which actions, perception, decisions, and memory of features or objects are systematically biased towards the recent past. Across several decades, serial dependencies have been variously referred to as priming, sequential dependencies, sequential effects or serial effects. Despite a great deal of research, the functional purpose of positive serial dependencies remains unknown. In this Perspective, we propose that their goal is to promote the stability, accuracy and efficiency of perceptual representations. By continuously inducing serial dependencies, cognition compensates for variability in sensory input and thus stabilizes what would otherwise be a noisy, jittery and discontinuous experience of the world. We theorize that this goal is served by continuity fields: spatiotemporal integration mechanisms that continuously bias perception and cognition towards previously encountered information, thereby smoothing representations to promote the stability, accuracy and efficiency of experience. Experiences of objects and features are biased to appear more like previously seen stimuli than they really are. In this Perspective, Manassi and Whitney describe this phenomenon of positive serial dependence and propose continuity fields as the underlying mechanism.