BAPS 2025 · How our past affects our present: Attractive and repulsive history effects on our perception and cognition across modalities, research fields, individuals, and tasks [symposium]
Michele Fornaciai, Robin Vloeberghs, Mert Can, & Eline Van Geert
Annual Meeting of the Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences 2025 · May 27, 2025 · Brussels, Belgium
The last decade has brought plenty of new research on attractive and repulsive history effects on our perception and cognition: What we perceive or decide now, partially depends on what we previously have perceived, responded, or decided. However, research results vary across different modalities, methods, and tasks, and researchers have diverse opinions on the processes underlying these history effects. This symposium will gather experts with different research backgrounds (i.e., perception, decision making) to synthesize what we have learned from a decade of intensive research on the topic, as well as to look to the future of this research field. After a brief introduction discussing what these history effects entail, the symposium will center around three key questions and discuss them from different scientific perspectives: (1) How general are these history effects (across modalities, tasks, individuals)? (2) How can we explain these history effects? (3) What do we need next? Each key question will be introduced and then three experts will briefly pitch their answer, also leaving room for a brief summary, questions, and live audience interaction using an online format, guided by the moderator.
For the first discussion concerning the generality of history effects (introduced and moderated by Robin Vloeberghs), Dr. Michele Fornaciai will talk about his research on the generality of attractive history effects across different perceptual dimensions (numerosity and time) and different sensory modalities (vision and audition). Mert Can will present his investigation on the occurrence of attractive and repulsive history effects across tasks with different response types and stimulus durations. Dr. Eline Van Geert will discuss whether everyone shows attractive and repulsive history effects and whether they do so to the same extent.
The second key question focuses on possible explanations for the occurrence of these history effects (introduced and moderated by Mert Can). Dr. Michele Fornaciai will discuss the neural signature of attractive history effects and what it can tell us about the processes behind these effects. Dr. Eline Van Geert will briefly introduce a Bayesian model that can account for both attractive and repulsive history effects, distinguishing between effects of the previous stimulus and the previous percept. Robin Vloeberghs will illuminate how criterion fluctuations can at least partially explain the occurrence of sequential effects.
In a third part, our experts will reflect on the future of this research field (introduced and moderated by Eline Van Geert). Dr. Michele Fornaciai, Mert Can, and Robin Vloeberghs will discuss their views on how to integrate the different results and theories, and propose a way forward for expanding our understanding of how our past affects our present. They will present their perspectives on what we can learn from the work done as well as on viable future directions for this field. These future directions could include (a) moving away from debates contrasting oversimplistic single-factor explanations (e.g., whether an effect is either perceptual or decisional); (b) determining the relative (in)dependence of history effects at different levels of processing; and (c) developing models that can predict behavioral results across diverse response types and tasks.
With the symposium, we hope to introduce a broad audience to the existence and relevance of these history effects, the diversity of research on these effects, and the open questions in the field. Furthermore, by discussing how the diverse findings and theories can be reconciled and integrated, we hope to promote a more holistic understanding of these history effects on our perception and cognition.
Speakers
- Michele Fornaciai
- Mert Can
- Robin Vloeberghs
- Eline Van Geert