What was that object? On the role of identity information in the formation of object files and conscious object percepti
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
What was that object? On the role of identity information in the formation of object files and conscious object perception Stephanie C. Goodhew1 Received: 11 June 2018 / Accepted: 13 May 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Object files are a psychological representation that allows the human brain to keep track of objects, as they move and change across time. The question regarding what information is used to individuate versus update object files has been the focus of considerable scientific debate. Historically, the role of an object’s spatiotemporal history was emphasised, whereas more recent work has demonstrated a key contribution from surface features, such as colour. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of identity-level information in the formation and individuation of object files, and how it compares to the contribution of featural information. Using a modified spatial repetition-blindness paradigm, across four experiments, there was convergent evidence that surface features contribute to the formation of object files, whereas the role of identity information was at best much smaller and less reliable than the clear contribution from surface features, and the most parsimonious explanation is that it was not present at all.
Introduction Visual scenes can be complex and dynamic, demanding rapid identification, tracking, and individuation of objects. For example, when driving along a busy street, there are different types of objects to recognise (cars, bikes, signs, pedestrians, and dogs running on the grass near the side of the road). One of the challenges for the human brain in such scenarios is to be able to keep track of an object despite potential changes in its appearance and location over time and to distinguish these changes from the appearance of new objects entering the scene. The process of keeping track of an object over time is thought to be subserved by the visual–cognitive construct known as an object file. An object file is a temporary, episodic store, in which information about an object is updated as required. The purpose of the present paper was to examine the properties that influence the formation and individuation of object files. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01200-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Stephanie C. Goodhew [email protected] 1
Research School of Psychology, The Australian National University, Building 39, Canberra 2601, Australia
Kahneman, Treisman, and Gibbs (1992) were the first to develop a behavioural paradigm to establish the presence of object files. These authors designed a few variants of the paradigm, but the major one goes like this: participants are presented with an array containing two letters sitting inside shapes (e.g., a ‘P’ inside a triangle and an ‘S’ inside a square). These appear a given distance directly above and below fixation. The
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