The persistence of object file representations

Abstract

Coherent visual experience of dynamic scenes requires not only that the visual system segment scenes into component objects but that these object representations persist, so that an object can be identified as the same object from an earlier time. Object files (OFs) are visual representations thought to mediate such abilities: OFs lie between lower level sensory processing and higher level recognition, and they track salient objects over time and motion. OFs have traditionally been studied via objectspecific preview benefits (OSPBs), in which discriminations of an object's features are speeded when an earlier preview of those features occurred on the same object, as opposed to on a different object, beyond general displaywide priming. Despite its popularity, many fundamental aspects of the OF framework remain unexplored. For example, although OFs are thought to be involved primarily in online visual processing, we do not know how long such representations persist; previous studies found OSPBs for up to 1,500msec but did not test for longer durations. We explored this issue using a modified object reviewing paradigm and found that robust OSPBs persist for more than five times longer than has previously been tested-for at least 8 sec, and possibly for much longer. Object files may be the "glue" that makes visual experience coherent not just in online moment-by-moment processing, but on the scale of seconds that characterizes our everyday perceptual experiences. These findings also bear on research in infant cognition, where OFs are thought to explain infants' abilities to track and enumerate small sets of objects over longer durations.

Serial dependence in visual perception

“…There are many possible mechanisms – serial dependence being one—that could underlie the ability to track an object’s features in the face of object translation, eye movements, occlusion, and other interference. However, much of the evidence for object files comes from priming studies 25,36,37 , showing that discrimination of an object’s features is faster and more accurate when the same object was previewed earlier. Our present results differ from these prior findings in that we show that a tracked object looks similar from one moment to the next despite substantial changes in its properties (in this case, orientation)—technically, serial dependence causes observers to be less accurate in their perception of instantaneous object properties, but this illusion, like countless other illusions such as motion-induced mislocalizations 38 , size illusions 39 , and contrast illusions 40 is adaptive under most circumstances.…”

The role of surface feature continuity in object-based inhibition of return

“…First, the performance measure concerns a secondary feature (letters or shapes that appear briefly within the objects) that may be only indirectly associated with the primary objects whose continuity is being manipulated. Second, recent versions of the object-reviewing paradigm have depended on explicit memory for the task-relevant, secondary features of the objects (Hollingworth & Franconeri, 2009; Mitroff & Alvarez, 2007; Noles, Scholl, & Mitroff, 2005). 1 Participants are required to remember the letters or shapes that appear within the objects and report, explicitly, whether those features are present in the test display.…”

Oscillatory activity in the infant brain reflects object maintenance

“…Crucially, if an object becomes temporarily occluded behind another object, its index survives this transient invisibility while it points to the space hidden from view (9). This preservation of the index to an invisible object may last for seconds (10) and depends on whether the object has disappeared from view in a way that is consistent with occlusion. Invisible objects are less likely to be maintained, i.e., their ''object file'' is more likely to be discarded, when they disappear instantaneously or gradually but not consistently with the presence of a continuous occluding surface (9).…”