Effects of aging on figure-ground perception: Convexity context effects and competition resolution

Lass, Jordan; Bennett, Patrick J.; Peterson, Mary A.; Sekuler, Allison B.

doi:10.1167/17.2.15

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 66 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One such broader age-related functional change observed in prior studies is older adults’ reduced object perception abilities (Burke et al, 2011 ; Ryan et al, 2012 ; Scheerer and Marrone, 2014 ; see “Introduction” Section above). Recent data suggests that this functional deficit may in part be attributed to an age-related reduction in the inhibitory processing necessary for figure-ground segregation (specifically, inhibition of the groundside; Anderson et al, 2016 ; Lass et al, 2017 ). For instance, Anderson et al ( 2016 ) demonstrated that compared to young adults, older adults are slower and less accurate to categorize enclosed silhouettes as “novel” when a portion of a meaningful object is suggested on its groundside.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Changes in Perirhinal Cortex Sensitivity to Configuration and Part Familiarity and Connectivity to Visual Cortex

Cacciamani

Wager

Peterson

et al. 2017

Front. Aging Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The perirhinal cortex (PRC) is a medial temporal lobe (MTL) structure known to be involved in assessing whether an object is familiar (i.e., meaningful) or novel. Recent evidence shows that the PRC is sensitive to the familiarity of both whole object configurations and their parts, and suggests the PRC may modulate part familiarity responses in V2. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated age-related decline in the PRC’s sensitivity to part/configuration familiarity and assessed its functional connectivity to visual cortex in young and older adults. Participants categorized peripherally presented silhouettes as familiar (“real-world”) or novel. Part/configuration familiarity was manipulated via three silhouette configurations: Familiar (parts/configurations familiar), Control Novel (parts/configurations novel), and Part-Rearranged Novel (parts familiar, configurations novel). “Real-world” judgments were less accurate than “novel” judgments, although accuracy did not differ between age groups. The fMRI data revealed differential neural activity, however: In young adults, a linear pattern of activation was observed in left hemisphere (LH) PRC, with Familiar > Control Novel > Part-Rearranged Novel. Older adults did not show this pattern, indicating age-related decline in the PRC’s sensitivity to part/configuration familiarity. A functional connectivity analysis revealed a significant coupling between the PRC and V2 in the LH in young adults only. Older adults showed a linear pattern of activation in the temporopolar cortex (TPC), but no evidence of TPC-V2 connectivity. This is the first study to demonstrate age-related decline in the PRC’s representations of part/configuration familiarity and its covariance with visual cortex.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Changes in Perirhinal Cortex Sensitivity to Configuration and Part Familiarity and Connectivity to Visual Cortex

Cacciamani

Wager

Peterson

et al. 2017

Front. Aging Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We attributed the additional time to ambiguity resolution, suggested by Goldreich and Peterson's ( 2012 ) Bayesian observer (cf. Lass et al, 2017 for evidence consistent with this claim from tests of older participants). The results of Exp.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Another possibility is that iterative cortico-thalamic activity interacts with cortical mechanisms involved in inhibitory competition between the two possible interpretations of homo-convex displays. Lass et al ( 2017 ) found that older participants showed reduced or no convex figure CEs for homo-convex displays whereas they showed intact convex figure CEs for hetero-convex displays. They attributed their results to impaired suppressive mechanisms involved in inhibitory competition in older participants (cf., Betts et al, 2005 , 2009 ; Anderson et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Backward masking implicates cortico-cortical recurrent processes in convex figure context effects and cortico-thalamic recurrent processes in resolving figure-ground ambiguity

Peterson,

Campbell

2023

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionPrevious experiments purportedly showed that image-based factors like convexity were sufficient for figure assignment. Recently, however, we found that the probability of perceiving a figure on the convex side of a central border was only slightly higher than chance for two-region displays and increased with the number of display regions; this increase was observed only when the concave regions were homogeneously colored. These convex figure context effects (CEs) revealed that figure assignment in these classic displays entails more than a response to local convexity. A Bayesian observer replicated the convex figure CEs using both a convexity object prior and a new, homogeneous background prior and made the novel prediction that the classic displays in which both the convex and concave regions were homogeneous were ambiguous during perceptual organization.MethodsHere, we report three experiments investigating the proposed ambiguity and examining how the convex figure CEs unfold over time with an emphasis on whether they entail recurrent processing. Displays were shown for 100 ms followed by pattern masks after ISIs of 0, 50, or 100 ms. The masking conditions were designed to add noise to recurrent processing and therefore to delay the outcome of processes in which they play a role. In Exp. 1, participants viewed two- and eight-region displays with homogeneous convex regions (homo-convex displays; the putatively ambiguous displays). In Exp. 2, participants viewed putatively unambiguous hetero-convex displays. In Exp. 3, displays and masks were presented to different eyes, thereby delaying mask interference in the thalamus for up to 100 ms.Results and discussionThe results of Exps. 1 and 2 are consistent with the interpretation that recurrent processing is involved in generating the convex figure CEs and resolving the ambiguity of homo-convex displays. The results of Exp. 3 suggested that corticofugal recurrent processing is involved in resolving the ambiguity of homo-convex displays and that cortico-cortical recurrent processes play a role in generating convex figure CEs and these two types of recurrent processes operate in parallel. Our results add to evidence that perceptual organization evolves dynamically and reveal that stimuli that seem unambiguous can be ambiguous during perceptual organization.

show abstract

“…Older adults may be particularly vulnerable to noise due to the degradation of sensory information brought about by healthy ageing (Monge & Madden, 2016). It has been argued that older adults also have specific difficulties when competing regions need to be assigned figure or ground status during perceptual organization (Anderson et al, 2016;Lass et al, 2017). This is assumed to stem from deficits in inhibitory processing that are particularly pronounced when competition is high and in scenes that are more ambiguous or difficult to resolve.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirror symmetry and aging: The role of stimulus figurality and attention to colour

Martinović

Huber

Boyanova

et al. 2022

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Symmetry perception studies have generally used two stimulus types: figural and dot patterns. Here, we designed a novel figural stimulus—a wedge pattern—made of centrally aligned pseudorandomly positioned wedges. To study the effect of pattern figurality and colour on symmetry perception, we compared symmetry detection in multicoloured wedge patterns with nonfigural dot patterns in younger and older adults. Symmetry signal was either segregated or nonsegregated by colour, and the symmetry detection task was performed under two conditions: with or without colour-based attention. In the first experiment, we compared performance for colour-symmetric patterns that varied in the number of wedges (24 vs. 36) and number of colours (2 vs. 3) and found that symmetry detection was facilitated by attention to colour when symmetry and noise signals were segregated by colour. In the second experiment, we compared performance for wedge and dot patterns on a sample of younger and older participants. Effects of attention to colour in segregated stimuli were magnified for wedge compared with dot patterns, with older and younger adults showing different effects of attention to colour on performance. Older adults significantly underperformed on uncued wedge patterns compared with dot patterns, but their performance improved greatly through colour cueing, reaching performance levels similar to young participants. Thus, while confirming the age-related decline in symmetry detection, we found that this deficit could be alleviated in figural multicoloured patterns by attending to the colour that carries the symmetry signal.

show abstract

Effects of aging on figure-ground perception: Convexity context effects and competition resolution

Cited by 8 publications

References 66 publications

Age-Related Changes in Perirhinal Cortex Sensitivity to Configuration and Part Familiarity and Connectivity to Visual Cortex

Age-Related Changes in Perirhinal Cortex Sensitivity to Configuration and Part Familiarity and Connectivity to Visual Cortex

Backward masking implicates cortico-cortical recurrent processes in convex figure context effects and cortico-thalamic recurrent processes in resolving figure-ground ambiguity

Mirror symmetry and aging: The role of stimulus figurality and attention to colour

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About