The influence of temporal context on vision over multiple time scales

Past sensory experiences influence perception of the present. Multiple research subfields have emerged to study this phenomenon at different temporal scales. These fall into three categories: the influence of immediately preceding sensory events (micro), short sequences of events (meso), and regularities over long sequences of events (macro). In a single paradigm, we examined the influence of temporal context on perception at each scale. We identify two distinct mechanisms that operate across all scales. The first is moderated by attention and supports rapid motor responses to expected events. The second is independent of task-demands and dampens the feedforward neural responses to expected events, leading to unexpected events eliciting earlier and more precise neural representations. We further show that perceptual recall exclusively reflects neural representations during this initial feedforward stage and that serial dependence (recall biases towards previous events) is explained by expectation of sensory stability over time.