Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33958744›Full record

ArticleNature human behaviour2021

Unsupervised learning predicts human perception and misperception of gloss.

Katherine R Storrs, Barton L Anderson, Roland W Fleming

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature human behaviour, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
38citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

38 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Making models disagree to learn how brains compute.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026
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  19. The Architecture of Object-Based Attention.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023
    Review
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Katherine R StorrsDepartment of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany. katherine.storrs@gmail.com.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9573-8654
Barton L AndersonSchool of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Roland W FlemingDepartment of Experimental Psychology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5033-5069

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Reflectance, lighting and geometry combine in complex ways to create images. How do we disentangle these to perceive individual properties, such as surface glossiness? We suggest that brains disentangle properties by learning to model statistical structure in proximal images. To test this hypothesis, we trained unsupervised generative neural networks on renderings of glossy surfaces and compared their representations with human gloss judgements. The networks spontaneously cluster images according to distal properties such as reflectance and illumination, despite receiving no explicit information about these properties. Intriguingly, the resulting representations also predict the specific patterns of 'successes' and 'errors' in human perception. Linearly decoding specular reflectance from the model's internal code predicts human gloss perception better than ground truth, supervised networks or control models, and it predicts, on an image-by-image basis, illusions of gloss perception caused by interactions between material, shape and lighting. Unsupervised learning may underlie many perceptual dimensions in vision and beyond.

Indexed as

LightSurface PropertiesComputer GraphicsContrast SensitivityForm PerceptionHumansLightingMaterials SciencePhotic StimulationPsychophysicsTask Performance and AnalysisVisual Perception

Identifiers

PMID33958744
PMCPMC8526360

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.