More than a moment: What does it mean to call something an ‘event’?

Yates, Tristan S; Sherman, Brynn E.; Yousif, Sami

doi:10.3758/s13423-023-02311-4

Cited by 15 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 123 publications

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“…Experiment 2 adapted and tested a key idea from the event cognition literature (Yates et al, 2023; Zacks et al, 2011) in visual perception of physical events: Events are defined by their ability to predict what is going to happen next. For physical events, prediction entails simulating the trajectory of a moving object and anticipating which new objects will interact with the moving object (a form of coarse simulations, or “looking ahead”).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal segmentation and “look ahead” simulation: Physical events structure visual perception of intuitive physics.

Yates,

Yasuda,

Yildirim

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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How we perceive the physical world is not only organized in terms of objects, but also structured in time as sequences of events. This is especially evident in intuitive physics, with temporally bounded dynamics such as falling, occlusion, and bouncing demarcating the continuous flow of sensory inputs. While the spatial structure and attentional consequences of physical objects have been well-studied, much less is known about the temporal structure and attentional consequences of physical events in visual perception. Previous work has recognized physical events as units in the mind, and used presegmented object interactions to explore physical representations. However, these studies did not address whether and how perception imposes the kind of temporal structure that carves these physical events to begin with, and the attentional consequences of such segmentation during intuitive physics. Here, we use performance-based tasks to address this gap. In Experiment 1, we find that perception not only spontaneously separates visual input in time into physical events, but also, this segmentation occurs in a nonlinear manner within a few hundred milliseconds at the moment of the event boundary. In Experiment 2, we find that event representations, once formed, use coarse "look ahead" simulations to selectively prioritize those objects that are predictively part of the unfolding dynamics. This rich temporal and predictive structure of physical event representations, formed during vision, should inform models of intuitive physics. Public Significance StatementDespite the continuous flow of sensory inputs, our perceptual experiences are deeply structured in space in terms of objects and in time in terms of events. In many ways, most research in visual perception has focused on half of this structure: objects. To help reveal the structure of the other half, we turn to intuitive physics-our ability to see and predict how scenes react to forces-where events are especially evident. In intuitive physics, we do not just see objects with certain physical properties occupying certain places, but we experience dynamic patterns of interactions, for example, falling, colliding, bouncing, and entering and exiting containers. In two experiments with human observers, we synthesize methods and theories across the studies of attention, music cognition, seeing, and thinking, and find that the visual system spontaneously marks physical events at subsecond timescales and prioritizes objects relevant to the ongoing event.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal segmentation and “look ahead” simulation: Physical events structure visual perception of intuitive physics.

Yates,

Yasuda,

Yildirim

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…Despite the rich tradition of research in both object and event cognition, the nature of the basic units within each of these two domains—the mental ontologies within space and time—are not yet well understood: Indeed, there is no single precise definition of what an object or an event is in the respective bodies of literature (e.g., Scholl, 2001; Yates et al, 2023). In the current work, we aim to characterize the representational signatures of basic units of human experience across the spatial and temporal domains.…”

Section: Ontological Distinctions In the Spatial Domainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signatures of individuation across objects and events.

Lee,

Ji,

Papafragou

2024

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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The physical world provides humans with continuous streams of experience in both space and time. The human mind, however, can parse and organize this continuous input into discrete, individual units. In the current work, we characterize the representational signatures of basic units of human experience across the spatial (object) and temporal (event) domains. We propose that there are three shared, abstract signatures of individuation underlying the basic units of representation across the two domains. Specifically, individuated entities in both the spatial domain (objects) and temporal domain (bounded events) resist restructuring, have distinct parts, and do not tolerate breaks; unindividuated entities in both the spatial domain (substances) and the temporal domain (unbounded events) lack these features. In three experiments, we confirm these principles and discuss their significance for cognitive and linguistic theories of objects and events. Public Significance StatementHumans are able to parse and organize continuous streams of experience into individual mental units, such as objects (entities that extend over space) and events (entities that extend over time). The nature of these basic units of human experience is a foundational topic for the sciences of the mind. This study shows that mental units are connected across the spatial and temporal domains: Both objects and events are represented in terms of their structure.

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Engrams as mental files

Andonovski

2024

Synthese

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More than a moment: What does it mean to call something an ‘event’?

Cited by 15 publications

References 123 publications

Temporal segmentation and “look ahead” simulation: Physical events structure visual perception of intuitive physics.

Temporal segmentation and “look ahead” simulation: Physical events structure visual perception of intuitive physics.

Signatures of individuation across objects and events.

Engrams as mental files

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