Perceptual grouping by infants and preschool children (original) (raw)
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Objects That Work Together May Be Perceptually Grouped
2005
Perceiving functional relationships between objects may be fundamental to understanding visual environments. Even the identification of objects in a scene may be influenced by the functional relations that exist among those objects. In two experiments, normal observers identified a briefly-exposed target object presented with a semantically associated or unassociated distractor object. The target object and distractor were either arranged to work together, or not to do so. Identification was more accurate when target objects were arranged to work with an associated distractor than when they were arranged so as not to work with the distractor. In contrast, identification was worse when target objects worked with unassociated distractors than when they did not. A sensitivity to change in stimulus onset asynchrony suggested that the former (facilitatory) effect was perceptual in nature. We propose this as evidence that sets of objects engaged in familiar functional relationships are perceptually or attentionally grouped.
Influence of past experience on perceptual grouping
Psychological science, 2002
We used primed matching to examine the microgenesis of perceptual organization for familiar (upright letters) and unfamiliar (inverted letters) visual configurations that varied in the connectedness between their line components. The configurations of upright letters were available for priming as early as 40 ms, irrespective of connectedness between their line components. The configurations of connected inverted-letter primes were also available this early, but the configurations of disconnected inverted letters were not available until later These results show that past experience contributes to the early grouping of disconnected line segments into configurations. These findings suggest an interactive model of perceptual organization in which both image-based properties (e.g., connectedness) and input from object memories contribute to perceptual organization.
Attentional requirements in perceptual grouping depend on the processes involved in the organization
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
Previous studies on the role of attention in perceptual grouping have yielded contradicting findings, some suggesting that grouping requires attention and others indicating that it does not. Kimchi and Razpurker-Apfeld (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 11(4), 687-696, 2004) showed that attentional demands in grouping could vary according to the processes involved. The current study expanded on this, examining whether attentional demands vary for (a) different grouping principles and (b) as a function of contingent processing of element segregation and shape formation. We used the inattention paradigm with an online measure, in which participants engaged in an attentionally demanding changedetection task on a small matrix presented on a taskirrelevant backdrop of grouped elements. The backdrop grouping changed or stayed the same independently of any change in the target. Congruency effects produced by changes in backdrop grouping on target-change judgments indicate that the backdrop grouping was accomplished under inattention. The results showed congruency effects when grouping formed columns/rows by proximity but not by shape similarity, and when grouping into a distinct shape by collinearity did not involve element segregation. No congruency effects were found when grouping into a shape by collinearity or connectedness involved element segregation, except when connectedness was combined with color similarity. These results suggest that attentional demands depend on the combination of grouping principles and the complexity of the processes involved in the organization. These findings provide further support for the view that perceptual organization is a multiplicity of processes that vary in attentional demands.
Acta Psychologica, 2003
Recent research on perceptual grouping is described with particular emphasis on identifying the level(s) at which grouping factors operate. Contrary to the classical view of grouping as an early, two-dimensional, imagebased process, recent experimental results show that it is strongly influenced by phenomena related to perceptual constancy, such as binocular depth perception, lightness constancy, amodal completion, and illusory contours.
The repetition discrimination task: An objective method for studying perceptual grouping
Perception & Psychophysics, 2007
Five experiments are reported that demonstrate the use of the repetition discrimination task (RDT) to study perceptual grouping effects objectively and quantitatively. Experiments 1 and 3 validate the method by measuring grouping based on proximity, color similarity, common region, and element connectedness. Experiment 2 compares the RDT effects for proximity grouping to explicit subjective ratings of grouping strength in identical displays. Experiments 4 and 5 investigate the effects of size and orientation of surrounding ovals in displays in which competing organizations are present. In each case, the RDT produces clear, consistent patterns of response times that are consistent with predictions based on grouping. It thus represents an objective method for studying the full range of grouping phenomena originally described by Wertheimer.
Dynamics of perceptual grouping: similarities in the organization of visual and auditory groups
In vision, the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization are generally well understood and remain a subject of detailed analysis. However, the possibility for a unified theory of grouping across visual and auditory modalities remains largely unexplored. Here we present examples of auditory and visual Gestalt grouping, which share important organizational properties. In particular, similarities are revealed between grouping processes in apparent motion, auditory streaming, and static 2-D displays. Given the substantial difference in the context, within which the phenomena in question occur (auditory vs. visual, static vs. dynamic), these similarities suggest that the dynamics of perceptual organization could be associated with a common (possibly central) mechanism. If the relevance of supramodal invariants of grouping is granted, the question arises as to whether they can be studied empirically. We propose that a force-field theory, based on a differential-geometric interpretation of perceptual space could provide a suitable starting point for a systematic exploration of the subjective properties of certain classes of auditory and visual grouping phenomena.
The effects of grouping on the learning and long-term retention of spatial and temporal information
Journal of Memory and Language, 2003
In three experiments, participants learned either the temporal sequence or the spatial arrangement of a list of 18 words, presented 1 at a time, each in a different location within a vertical array. The words were either ungrouped or grouped into 2 sets of 9, with each set divided into 3 subsets. In Experiment 1, grouping aided the learning of spatial arrangement but not temporal sequence. In Experiment 2, learning was made more difficult for half of the participants by increasing the rate of word presentation, but grouping did not affect the learning of temporal order information in either difficulty condition. In Experiment 3, phonological processing was blocked by articulatory suppression for half of the participants, but grouping still did not affect learning temporal order. It is concluded that participants take advantage of grouping to learn spatial but not temporal information, thereby challenging unitary accounts of learning order information.