Effects of grouping and attention on the perception of causality

Choi, Hoon; Scholl, Brian J.

doi:10.3758/bf03194985

Cited by 54 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Participants reported having the impression that a different object suddenly appeared from behind the occluder in the discontinuous conditions. The distance between the trajectories also had an influence on the event alteration effect-a finding that is consistent with those of the previous studies (Choi & Scholl, 2004;Kawachi & Gyoba, 2006b) 5 : As the distance between the nearby object and the two objects in the stream/ bounce display was increased, the percentage of the streaming percept decreased.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Occluded motion alters event perception

Kawachi

Gyoba

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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We employed audiovisual stream/bounce displays, in which two moving objects with crossing trajectories are more likely to be perceived as bouncing off, rather than streaming through, each other when a brief sound is presented at the coincidence of the two objects. However, Kawachi and Gyoba (Perception 35:1289-1294, 2006b) reported that the presence of an additional moving object near the two objects altered the perception of a bouncing event to that of a streaming event. In this study, we extended this finding and examined whether alteration of the event perception could be induced by the visual context, such as by occluded object motion near the stream/bounce display. The results demonstrated that even when the sound was presented, the continuous occluded motion strongly biased observers' percepts toward the streaming percept during a short occlusion interval (approximately 100 ms). In contrast, when the continuous occluded motion was disrupted by introducing a spatiotemporal gap in the motion trajectory or by removing occlusion cues such as deletion/accretion, the bias toward the streaming percept declined. Thus, we suggest that a representation of object motion generated under a limited occlusion interval interferes with audiovisual event perception.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

Occluded motion alters event perception

Kawachi

Gyoba

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…Visual attention has a critical role in motion perception, selecting and integrating visual information across time and space, and keeping track of and identifying moving objects (see, e.g., Cavanagh, 1992;Choi & Scholl, 2004;Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988). Research on the effects of the state of visual attention on stream/bounce perception has revealed that poorer attentional resources directed to the moving object cause more frequent bouncing percepts (K. Watanabe & Shimojo, 1998), suggesting that a sufficient quality of attention is required for constant motion-integration processing, and thus the perception of streaming.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stream/bounce perception and the effect of depth cues in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Matsuno

Tomonaga

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The stream/bounce display represents an ambiguous motion event in which two identical visual objects move toward one another and the objects overlap completely before they pass each another. In our perception, they can be interpreted as either streaming past one another or bouncing off each other. Previous studies have shown that the streaming percept of the display is generic for humans, suggesting the inertial nature of the motion integration process. In this study, chimpanzees took part in behavioral experiments using an object-tracking task to reveal the characteristics of their stream/bounce perception. Chimpanzees did not show a tendency toward a dominant "stream" perception of the stream/bounce stimulus. However, depth cues, such as X-junctions and local motion coherence, did promote the stream percept in chimpanzees. These results suggest both similarities and differences between chimpanzees and humans with respect to motion integration and object individuation processes.

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“…These studies state that existence of a causal event in the surrounding environment improves the perception of causality in a non-causal event by ~80% [12]. Another interesting study is one which examines the ability of perceptual grouping to influence causality [3]. In this study, the authors show that connectivity between a causal and non-causal event improves the perception of causality in the non-causal event, which has some bearing on the connected lines that are employed in visualizing our causal graphs.…”

Section: Perceiving Causalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Visualizing Causal Semantics Using Animations

Kadaba

Irani

Leboe

2007

IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics

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Abstract-Michotte's theory of ampliation suggests that causal relationships are perceived by objects animated under appropriate spatiotemporal conditions. We extend the theory of ampliation and propose that the immediate perception of complex causal relations is also dependent on a set of structural and temporal rules. We designed animated representations, based on Michotte's rules, for showing complex causal relationships or causal semantics. In this paper we describe a set of animations for showing semantics such as causal amplification, causal strength, causal dampening, and causal multiplicity. In a two part study we compared the effectiveness of both the static and animated representations. The first study (N=44) asked participants to recall passages that were previously displayed using both types of representations. Participants were 8% more accurate in recalling causal semantics when they were presented using animations instead of static graphs. In the second study (N=112) we evaluated the intuitiveness of the representations. Our results showed that while users were as accurate with the static graphs as with the animations, they were 9% faster in matching the correct causal statements in the animated condition. Overall our results show that animated diagrams that are designed based on perceptual rules such as those proposed by Michotte have the potential to facilitate comprehension of complex causal relations.Index Terms-Causality, visualization, semantics, animated graphs, perception, visualizing cause and effect, graph semantics. 1INTRODUCTION Causal relations are deeply rooted in human reasoning and appear in many contexts. Cause-and-effect relationships are used for explaining natural phenomena (the iron will become red under the influence of fire) and for specifying and resolving research questions (do horror movies lead to aggressive behaviour?). In most cases such relationships are intermeshed in the collection of information and data available to the user. To better comprehend cause-and-effect relationships, many visual representations, typically in the form of diagrams, have been developed and are being used extensively.Causal graphs constitute the most common representation of cause-and-effect relationships. These are directed acyclic graphs, in which vertices denote variable features of a phenomenon and edges denote a direct causal claim between these features (Fig. 1). These graphs have appeared in many forms: Feynman diagrams in physics [18], Lombardi diagrams to explain secret deals and suspect relations [6], and influence diagrams to represent the essential elements of a decision problem such as decisions, uncertainties, and objectives, and how they influence each other [16]. In all these variations, the causal graphs replace long verbose descriptions or complex mathematical formulations that describe events with their causes and effects.Although, node-link causal graphs provide information about cause-and-effect, in certain cases it can be very difficult to make credible causal inferences...

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Effects of grouping and attention on the perception of causality

Cited by 54 publications

References 36 publications

Occluded motion alters event perception

Occluded motion alters event perception

Stream/bounce perception and the effect of depth cues in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Visualizing Causal Semantics Using Animations

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