Segmentation, attention and phenomenal visual objects

Abstract

Issues concerning selective attention provoke new questions about visual segmentation, and vice-versa. We illustrate this by describing our recent work on grouping under conditions of inattention, on change blindness for background events and the residual processing of undetected background changes, on modal versus amodal completion in visual search, and the differential effects of these two forms of completion on attentional processes, and on attentional modulation of lateral interactions thought to arise in early visual cortex. Many of these results indicate that segmentation processes substantially constrain attentional processes, but the reverse in¯uence is also apparent, suggesting an interactive architecture. We discuss how the`proto-objects' revealed by studies of segmentation and attention (i.e. the segmented perceptual units which constrain selectivity) may relate to other object-based notions in cognitive science, and we wrestle with their relation to phenomenal visual awareness. q

Automatic spread of attentional response modulation along Gestalt criteria in primary visual cortex

“…These grouping mechanisms can take advantage of Gestalt grouping cues 1 ; parts of the same object are more likely to be in each other's good continuation, move in the same direction and have the same colour than parts of different objects. Treisman & Gelade 2 proposed that selective attention integrates features into objects, and object-based attention theories suggest that attention spreads according to the Gestalt grouping cues so that image elements that belong to the same object are co-selected [3][4][5] .…”

Automatic, stimulus-driven attentional capture by objecthood

“…However, recent research (e.g., Driver, Davis, Russell, Turatto, & Freeman, 2001;Scholl, 2001;Vecera, 2000) points to important connections between the processes of organization and attention.…”

Inhibition of object identity in inhibition of return: Implications for encoding and retrieving inhibitory processes

“…and become candidates for subsequent processes of object identification. It is thought that these low-level representations are inhibited during orienting and visual search (Driver, Davis, Russell, Turatto, & Freeman, 2001). By contrast, there is little evidence that inhibition can be associated with higher level representations, such as the identity of an object.…”