The Perception of Relations

Hafri, Alon; Firestone, Chaz

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.01.006

Cited by 90 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 122 publications

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“…Thus, depending on their relative spatial positioning, the same two bodies are visually processed in different ways. This result is compatible with growing evidence showing that the processing of spatial relations is part of, and affects, the object recognition process (25,33,43,44). In addition, here we showed particularly high sensitivity of the EBA and FFA to the inversion of facing (vs. non-facing) dyads, which characterizes the increased neural response to facing dyads, in terms of configural processing.…”

Section: Discussion (1377)supporting

confidence: 92%

A new behavioral and neural marker of social vision

Abassi

Papeo

2021

Preprint

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Research on face perception has revealed highly specialized visual mechanisms such as configural processing, and provided markers of interindividual differences -including disease risks and alterations- in visuoperceptual abilities that traffic in social cognition. Is face perception unique in degree or kind of mechanisms, and in its relevance for social cognition? Combining fMRI and behavioral methods, we address the processing of an uncharted class of socially relevant stimuli: minimal social scenes involving configurations of two bodies spatially close and face-to-face. We report category-specific activity for facing (vs. non-facing) two-body configurations in visual cortex. That activity shows face-like signatures of configural processing -i.e., stronger response and greater susceptibility to stimulus inversion for facing (vs. non-facing) dyads-, and is predicted by performance-based measures of body-dyad perception. Moreover, individual performance in body-dyad perception is reliable, stable-over-time and correlated with the individual social sensitivity, coarsely captured by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. Further analyses clarify the relationship between single-body and body-dyad perception. We propose that facing dyads are processed with the same high specialization of the most biologically/socially relevant stimuli: faces. Like face perception, facing-dyad perception can provide a measure of basic (visual) processes that lay the foundations for understanding others, their relationships and interactions.

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Section: Discussion (1377)supporting

confidence: 92%

A new behavioral and neural marker of social vision

Abassi

Papeo

2021

Preprint

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“…The conservative view holds that perception represents only low-level properties such as including lightness, color, shape (Bayne, 2009;Firestone & Scholl, 2016). The liberal view holds that perception also represents higher-level properties, such as relations, and intention (Hafri & Firestone, 2021;Samson et al, 2010). Our findings support the liberal view.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

The spatial distance compression effect is due to social interaction and not mere configuration

Sun

et al. 2021

Psychon Bull Rev

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In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in perception, evaluation, and memory for social interactions from a third-person perspective. One intriguing finding is a spatial distance compression effect when target dyads are facing each other. Specifically, face-to-face dyads are remembered as being spatially closer than back-to-back dyads. There is a vibrant debate about the mechanism behind this effect, and two hypotheses have been proposed. According to the social interaction hypothesis, face-to-face dyads engage a binding process that represents them as a social unit, which compresses the perceived distance between them. In contrast, the configuration hypothesis holds that the effect is produced by the front-to-front configuration of the two visual targets. In the present research we sought to test these accounts. In Experiment 1 we successfully replicated the distance compression effect with two upright faces that were facing each other, but not with inverted faces. In contrast, we found no distance compression effect with three types of nonsocial stimuli: arrows (Experiment 2a), fans (Experiment 2b), and cars (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, we replicated this effect with another social stimuli: upright bodies. Taken together, these results provide strong support for the social interaction hypothesis.

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“…For example, Ludwin-Peery et al ( 2020 ) recently discovered that intuitive physical reasoning (e.g., about the movement of physically interacting objects) exhibits conjunction-fallacy-like behavior, and interpreted this as evidence that physical intuitions must have a cognitive basis rather than a perceptual one (cf. Firestone & Scholl, 2016b , 2017 ; Hafri & Firestone, 2021 ; Little & Firestone, 2021 )—because perception isn’t the sort of process that could arrive at such a fallacious outcome. The present work suggests that this may not be a secure inference, if perception can indeed show conjunction-fallacy-like behavior after all.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Impossible” Somatosensation and the (Ir)rationality of Perception

2021

Self Cite

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Impossible figures represent the world in ways it cannot be. From the work of M. C. Escher to any popular perception textbook, such experiences show how some principles of mental processing can be so entrenched and inflexible as to produce absurd and even incoherent outcomes that could not occur in reality. Surprisingly, however, such impossible experiences are mostly limited to visual perception; are there “impossible figures” for other sensory modalities? Here, we import a known magic trick into the laboratory to report and investigate an impossible somatosensory experience—one that can be physically felt. We show that, even under full-cue conditions with objects that can be freely inspected, subjects can be made to experience a single object alone as feeling heavier than a group of objects that includes the single object as a member—an impossible and phenomenologically striking experience of weight. Moreover, we suggest that this phenomenon—a special case of the size-weight illusion—reflects a kind of “anti-Bayesian” perceptual updating that amplifies a challenge to rational models of perception and cognition. Impossibility can not only be seen, but also felt—and in ways that matter for accounts of (ir)rational mental processing.

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The Perception of Relations

Cited by 90 publications

References 122 publications

A new behavioral and neural marker of social vision

A new behavioral and neural marker of social vision

The spatial distance compression effect is due to social interaction and not mere configuration

“Impossible” Somatosensation and the (Ir)rationality of Perception

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