According to the predictive processing framework, perception is geared to represent the environment in terms of embodied action opportunities as opposed to objective truth. Here, we argue that such an optimisation is reflected by biases in expectations (i.e., prior predictive information) that facilitate ‘useful’ inferences of external sensory causes. To support this, we highlight a body of literature suggesting that perception is systematically biased away from accurate estimates under conditions where utility and accuracy conflict with one another. We interpret this to reflect the brain’s attempt to adjudicate between conflicting sources of prediction error, as external accuracy is sacrificed to facilitate actions that proactively avoid physiologically surprising outcomes. This carries important theoretical implications and offers new insights into psychopathology.

根据预测处理框架，感知旨在根据具体的行动机会而不是客观事实来表示环境。在这里，我们认为这种优化反映在期望偏差（即先验预测信息）中，这些偏差促进了外部感官原因的“有用”推断。为了支持这一点，我们强调了一系列文献，这些文献表明，在效用和准确性相互冲突的情况下，感知会系统地偏离准确估计。我们将其解释为反映大脑试图在相互冲突的预测误差来源之间做出判断，因为牺牲了外部准确性以促进主动避免生理上令人惊讶的结果的行动。