Predictive processing in visual perception of actions: The interplay of long-term and short-term priors

Predictive processing theories suggest that perception is shaped by prior knowledge, withlong-term priors formed through lifelong experiences and short-term priors emerging fromimmediate contextual cues. While prior research has explored the influence of expectationson action perception, the interaction between short-term and long-term priors remainsunderstudied. This study examines how these priors interact in visual action perception byembedding animated human and robot agents within a probabilistic-cueing paradigm.Participants observed agents performing biological or mechanical motion, with cuesproviding either visual or kinematic short-term priors. Behavioral results revealed thatlong-term priors played a dominant role, particularly when expectations were congruent.However, when long-term priors were incongruent, short-term kinematic cues influencedboth accuracy and response times, whereas visual short-term cues had a minimal effect.These findings highlight the hierarchical nature of predictive processing in action perceptionand suggest that kinematic information is prioritized over visual form when resolvingperceptual ambiguity.