Inhibition drives configural superiority of illusory Gestalt: Combined behavioral and drift–diffusion model evidence

Nie, Qi-Yang; Maurer, Mara; Müller, Hermann J.; Conci, Markus

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2016.02.007

Cited by 23 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…It thus appears that extinction varies systematically with the degree to which grouping processes effectively integrate fragmented parts into coherent wholes ( Figure 4C), with gradual contributions from contour and surface completion mechanisms (Grossberg & Mingolla, 1985). A comparable gradual variation has also been reported in visual search studies with healthy observers, which presented Kanizsa figures: search efficiency varied systematically with the amount of contour and surface information in candidate target objects (Conci, Gramann, Müller, & Elliott, 2006;Conci, Müller, & Elliott, 2007;Wiegand et al, 2015;Nie, Maurer, Müller, & Conci, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Attention as the ‘glue’ for object integration in parietal extinction

Conci

Groß

Keller

et al. 2018

Cortex

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Patients with unilateral, parietal brain damage frequently show visual extinction, which manifests in a failure to identify contralesional stimuli when presented simultaneously with other, ipsilesional stimuli (but full awareness for single stimulus presentations). Extinction reflects an impairment of spatial selective attention, leaving basic preattentive processing unaffected. For instance, access to bilaterally grouped objects is usually spared in extinction, suggesting that grouping occurs at a stage preceding (in the patients: abnormally biased) spatial-attentional selection. Here, we reinvestigated this notion by comparing (largely between participants, but also within a single-case participant) conditions with objects that varied in their dominant direction of grouping: from the attended to the non-attended hemifield (data from Conci et al., 2009) versus from the non-attended to the attended hemifield (new data). We observe complete absence of extinction when shape completion extended from the attended hemifield. By contrast, extinction was not diminished when object groupings propagate from the unattended hemifield. Moreover, we found the individual severity of the attentional impairment (assessed by a standard "inattention" test) to be directly related to the degree of completion in the unattended hemifield. This pattern indicates that grouping can overcome visual extinction only when object integration departs from the attended visual field, implying, contrary to many previous accounts, that attention is crucial for grouping to be initiated.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 70%

Attention as the ‘glue’ for object integration in parietal extinction

Conci

Groß

Keller

et al. 2018

Cortex

Self Cite

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“…For example, Li et al (2008) noted that in these studies there is a possibility that 'something other' than the contour was responsible for guiding search. The possession of illusory surfaces or object closure might act as a visual feature or salient property (Conci, Gramann, Müller, & Elliott, 2006;Conci, Müller, & Elliott, 2007a, b;Nie, Maurer, Müller, & Conci, 2016) thus producing a signal that discriminates the illusory contours from the non-illusory search context. This might have produced the selective search of illusory contours in the FEB condition in Experiment 2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual grouping constrains inhibition in time-based visual selection

Zupan

Watson

2019

Atten Percept Psychophys

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In time-based visual selection, task-irrelevant, old stimuli can be inhibited in order to allow the selective processing of new stimuli that appear at a later point in time (the preview benefit; Watson & Humphreys, 1997). The current study investigated if illusory and non-illusory perceptual groups influence the ability to inhibit old and prioritize new stimuli in time-based visual selection. Experiment 1 showed that with Kanizsa-type illusory stimuli, a preview benefit occurred only when displays contained a small number of items. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a set of Kanizsa-type illusory stimuli could be selectively searched amongst a set of non-illusory distractors with no additional preview benefit obtained by separating the two sets of stimuli in time. Experiment 3 showed that, similarly to Experiment 1, non-illusory perceptual groups also produced a preview benefit only for a small number of number of distractors. Experiment 4 demonstrated that local changes to perceptually grouped old items eliminated the preview benefit. The results indicate that the preview benefit is reduced in capacity when applied to complex stimuli that require perceptual grouping, regardless of whether the grouped elements elicit illusory contours. Further, inhibition is applied at the level of grouped objects, rather than to the individual elements making up those groups. The findings are discussed in terms of capacity limits in the inhibition of old distractor stimuli when they consist of perceptual groups, the attentional requirements of forming perceptual groups and the mechanisms and efficiency of time-based visual selection.

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“…This can be taken to indicate that, in a predictive environment, observers can use nontarget information to effectively exclude the irrelevant items from search. In fact, it has been proposed recently that attentional selection may operate predominantly via down-weighting (i.e., inhibition) of distractor features, rather than the concurrent up-weighting (i.e., activation) of target features (Moher, Lakshmanan, Egeth, & Ewen, 2014;Nie, Maurer, Müller, & Conci, 2016). A potential mechanism of how distractor inhibition may work in search guidance is via the setting-up of a negative attentional template that specifies the to-be-avoided, distractor information (Duncan & Humphreys, 1989;Humphreys & Müller, 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%