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Visual awareness of objects and their colour
Abstract
At any given moment, our awareness of what we 'see' before us seems to be rather limited. If, for instance, a display containing multiple objects is shown (red or green disks), when one object is suddenly covered at random, observers are often little better than chance in reporting about its colour (Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, Visual Cognition, 14, 749-780, 2006). We tested whether, when object attributes (such as colour) are unknown, observers still retain any knowledge of the presence of that object at a display location. Experiments 1-3 involved a task requiring two-alternative (yes/no) responses about the presence or absence of a colour-defined object at a probed location. On this task, if participants knew about the presence of an object at a location, responses indicated that they also knew about its colour. A fourth experiment presented the same displays but required a three-alternative response. This task did result in a data pattern consistent with participants' knowing more about the locations of objects within a display than about their individual colours. However, this location advantage, while highly significant, was rather small in magnitude. Results are compared with those of Huang (Journal of Vision, 10(10, Art. 24), 1-17, 2010), who also reported an advantage for object locations, but under quite different task conditions.
... What is less clear is the basis of these effects and, more specifically, whether the visual representations themselves are influenced. Two experiments explore this (Wolfe, Reinecke & Brawn, 2006;Reinecke, Rinck & Becker, 2006;Pilling & Gellatly, 2011). This paradigm is particularly suited to our research question because it requires only a simple perceptual judgement on the part of the observer, who is merely being required to report a feature of a single probed item immediately after viewing it (rather than perform a visual comparison across two sequentially presented displays as required by the more ubiquitous change detection paradigm). ...
... coloured shapes) is presented and viewed for several hundred milliseconds before one item is abruptly covered by the probe, participants then making an unspeeded decision about an aspect of the probe item e.g. was it a red or green disk, was it a left or right tilted bar? Despite the long viewing time, the probe"s immediacy and the absence of spatial uncertainty about the required perceptual decision, participants can be surprisingly poor on this task (Wolfe et al., 2006), performance decreasing proportionally with the number of display items (Pilling & Gellatly, 2011). ...
We investigated the influence of dimensional set on report of object feature information using an immediate memory probe task. Participants viewed displays containing up to 36 coloured geometric shapes which were presented for several hundred milliseconds before one item was abruptly occluded by a probe. A cue presented simultaneously with the probe instructed participants to report either about the colour or shape of the probe item. A dimensional set towards the colour or shape of the presented items was induced by manipulating task probability - the relative probability with which the two feature dimensions required report. This was done across two participant groups: One group was given trials where there was a higher report probability of colour, the other a higher report probability of shape. Two experiments showed that features were reported most accurately when they were of high task probability, though in both cases the effect was largely driven by the colour dimension. Importantly the task probability effect did not interact with display set size. This is interpreted as tentative evidence that this manipulation influences feature processing in a global manner and at a stage prior to visual short term memory.
... Recent studies reveal that while the semiotic and rhetorical dimensions of meat advertisements are recognized, there is potential for more nuanced exploration. Many advertisements focus on visual appeal and emotional engagement but may underutilize detailed rhetorical arguments and product information [10]. A deeper analysis of these aspects can enhance our understanding of how advertisements persuade and influence consumer behavior. ...
This paper is based on the SemRetPC project (Semiotics and Rhetorics of Meat-Products Advertising). We present an interdisciplinary approach to teaching English through the analysis of meat product advertisements, combining elements of cultural studies, linguistics and marketing,. By utilizing advertisements as educational tools, the study demonstrates how language and persuasive techniques in marketing can enhance students' comprehension and critical thinking skills.
In the context of English teaching, students are asked to answer a detailed questionnaire regarding the semiotics and rhetorics of the language used in advertisements. This process enables them to understand how messages are designed to influence consumer behavior, and how cultural contexts and societal values are embedded in marketing communications. Students learn to identify and analyze various stylistic devices, such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, and euphemism, and to understand their impact on audience perception and behavior.
Moreover, this approach integrates practical exercises where students create their own advertisements, applying the semiotic and rhetorical principles they have studied. This hands-on experience not only solidifies their understanding of the theoretical concepts but also hones their creativity and persuasive communication skills.
By examining real-world examples of advertising, students gain insight into the ethical implications of marketing strategies, such as the manipulation of desires and the reinforcement of stereotypes. Discussions on these topics help foster a critical awareness of media influence and consumer culture.
Ultimately, this interdisciplinary method promotes a deeper appreciation of language's power and versatility in various contexts, making learning more relevant and engaging. It prepares students to navigate and critically assess the complex landscape of modern media, equipping them with valuable skills for both their academic and professional futures.
... The dimensional effects identified by van Lamsweerde and are not restricted to change detection. Pilling and Gellatly (2013) observed similar effects using a different type of VSTM task: an abrupt-probe task (Pilling & Gellatly, 2011;Wolfe et al., 2006). In the task, participants viewed a display containing from nine to 36 colored shapes. ...
We investigated how dimension-based attention influences visual short-term memory (VSTM). This was done through examining the effects of cueing a feature dimension in two perceptual comparison tasks (change detection and sameness detection). In both tasks, a memory array and a test array consisting of a number of colored shapes were presented successively, interleaved by a blank interstimulus interval (ISI). In Experiment 1 (change detection), the critical event was a feature change in one item across the memory and test arrays. In Experiment 2 (sameness detection), the critical event was the absence of a feature change in one item across the two arrays. Auditory cues indicated the feature dimension (color or shape) of the critical event with 80 % validity; the cues were presented either prior to the memory array, during the ISI, or simultaneously with the test array. In Experiment 1, the cue validity influenced sensitivity only when the cue was given at the earliest position; in Experiment 2, the cue validity influenced sensitivity at all three cue positions. We attributed the greater effectiveness of top-down guidance by cues in the sameness detection task to the more active nature of the comparison process required to detect sameness events (Hyun, Woodman, Vogel, Hollingworth, & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35; 1140-1160, 2009).
... Firstly, shape has a higher priority in cognition and uses fewer resources. Cognitively, humans deal with shape stimuli more easily than color stimuli ( Aginsky & Tarr, 2000 ;Pilling & Gellatly, 2011 ). Secondly, color and shape have diff erent processing systems, are stored separately in visual modality, and have diff erent priorities ( Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, 2006 ;Pinna, 2011 ). ...
The effect of color and shape load on conceptual processing was studied. Perceptual load effects have been found in visual and auditory conceptual processing, supporting the theory of embodied cognition. However, whether different types of visual concepts, such as color and shape, share the same perceptual load effects is unknown. In the current experiment, 32 participants were administered simultaneous perceptual and conceptual tasks to assess the relation between perceptual load and conceptual processing. Keeping color load in mind obstructed color conceptual processing. Hence, perceptual processing and conceptual load shared the same resources, suggesting embodied cognition. Color conceptual processing was not affected by shape pictures, indicating that different types of properties within vision were separate.
For almost 120 years, it has been demonstrated in literature that humans are susceptible to many different types of change blindness; essentially if a change in a visual scene is not sudden or obvious, it fails to be detected. Research utilising video game environments provides the opportunity for the study of change blindness during dynamic and interactive tasks. This study examined participant perception of gradual broad changes to both colour and textural information across surfaces and objects in a video game mimicking that of a First-Person adventure or point and click game/genre escape room task. 119 participants were asked to solve a room escape puzzle, results demonstrated that perception of gradual textural changes to an environment across a range of decreasing durations (90 s, 45 s, 22.5 s & 11.25 s) were detected only by a very small proportion of participants (4.20%). There was no significant effect of the variation in time on detection rates.
Typical studies of object substitution masking (OSM) employ a briefly presented search array. The target item is indicated by a cue/mask that surrounds but does not overlap the target and, compared to a common offset control condition, report of the target is reduced when the mask remains present after target offset. Given how little observers are able to report of item arrays that have been presented for several hundred milliseconds (Wolfe, Reinecke, & Brawn, 2006), it might be expected that OSM would also be found if the search array is presented for an extended period before the target is cued by onset of a mask surrounding it. However, Gellatly, Pilling, Carter, and Guest (2010) reported that under these conditions OSM is greatly reduced. This target duration effect could be due to identity information about the search array having been loaded into VSTM during the precue period. Alternatively, it can be understood in terms of target/mask individuation and the object updating account of OSM (Lleras & Moore, 2003). The present article reports three experiments investigating which of these possibilities provides the better explanation of the effect of target duration on OSM. The results support the individuation hypothesis and, thereby, the object updating account of OSM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
Advances in neuroscience implicate reentrant signaling as the predominant form of communication between brain areas. This principle was used in a series of masking experiments that defy explanation by feed-forward theories. The masking occurs when a brief display of target plus mask is continued with the mask alone. Two masking processes were found: an early process affected by physical factors such as adapting luminance and a later process affected by attentional factors such as set size. This later process is called masking by object substitution, because it occurs whenever there is a mismatch between the reentrant visual representation and the ongoing lower level activity. Iterative reentrant processing was formalized in a computational model that provides an excellent fit to the data. The model provides a more comprehensive account of all forms of visual masking than do the long-held feed-forward views based on inhibitory contour interactions.
Recent years have seen an expanded interest in recognition memory tasks. This resurgence of interest has also renewed concerns with measurement problems. Comparing 4 models of recognition memory, Snodgrass and Corwin (1988) found that measures of bias from the distribution-free (nonparametric) model were inadequate. However, their analysis was based on bias measures that can be shown a priori to be nonindependent of discrimination. This article traces the history of the nonparametric model and develops a better measure of bias. The consequence of developing this better measure is that the nonparametric model deserves serious consideration.
Working memory can be divided into separate subsystems for verbal and visual information. Although the verbal system has been well characterized, the storage capacity of visual working memory has not yet been established for simple features or for conjunctions of features. The authors demonstrate that it is possible to retain information about only 3-4 colors or orientations in visual working memory at one time. Observers are also able to retain both the color and the orientation of 3-4 objects, indicating that visual working memory stores integrated objects rather than individual features. Indeed, objects defined by a conjunction of four features can be retained in working memory just as well as single-feature objects, allowing many individual features to be retained when distributed across a small number of objects. Thus, the capacity of visual working memory must be understood in terms of integrated objects rather than individual features.
Purpose:When pattern elements have random orientation, human ability to detect changes in orientation of a single element deteriorates dramatically with the total number of elements (change blindness set-size effect). However, when elements have orientations that are tangent to a circle, there is little, if any, set-size effect (Kempgens, Loffler & Orbach, VSS 2006). What are the factors producing this surprising ability to detect change in multi-element configurations?
Methods:Stimuli were composed of multiple D6 (6 cpd) elements, which were positioned as if on circular contours. We studied the effects of set-size (3–40 elements), inter-element spacing (0.7° – 4.7°), closure (a circle vs. a circular arc), circle radius (1.2°–6.2°), element orientation (tangential, radial, or jittered by ±2° to ±45° with respect to tangential), element position (radial jitter of up to ±50% of the 2.7° base radius), and the number of objects (three 120° arcs cut from a circle and everted) formed by the pattern elements. Subjects indicated in which of the sequentially presented stimuli one element had changed its orientation.
Results:Orientation change detection (threshold approximately 10°) was largely independent of set-size, inter-element spacing, closure, radius and small orientation (up to 6°) and radial position (up to 10%) jitter. However, jittering position or orientation above these levels drastically impaired performance, as did increasing the number of objects formed by the pattern elements.
Conclusions:Our results are in agreement with global mechanisms, which are relatively broadly tuned for orientation and position, sampling shape information within circular annuli. The relation between thresholds for single-circle patterns and patterns consisting of three objects (a triplet of non-concentric arcs) is consistent with probability summation between these units.
Available again, an influential book that offers a framework for understanding visual perception and considers fundamental questions about the brain and its functions.
David Marr's posthumously published Vision (1982) influenced a generation of brain and cognitive scientists, inspiring many to enter the field. In Vision, Marr describes a general framework for understanding visual perception and touches on broader questions about how the brain and its functions can be studied and understood. Researchers from a range of brain and cognitive sciences have long valued Marr's creativity, intellectual power, and ability to integrate insights and data from neuroscience, psychology, and computation. This MIT Press edition makes Marr's influential work available to a new generation of students and scientists.
In Marr's framework, the process of vision constructs a set of representations, starting from a description of the input image and culminating with a description of three-dimensional objects in the surrounding environment. A central theme, and one that has had far-reaching influence in both neuroscience and cognitive science, is the notion of different levels of analysis—in Marr's framework, the computational level, the algorithmic level, and the hardware implementation level.
Now, thirty years later, the main problems that occupied Marr remain fundamental open problems in the study of perception. Vision provides inspiration for the continuing efforts to integrate knowledge from cognition and computation to understand vision and the brain.
The difference between the roles of features and locations has been a central topic in the theoretical debates on visual attention. A recent theory proposed that momentary visual awareness is limited to one Boolean map, that is the linkage of one feature per dimension with a set of locations (Huang & Pashler, 2007). This theory predicts that: (a) access to the features of a set of objects is inefficient whereas access to their locations is efficient; (b) shuffling the locations of objects disrupts access to their features whereas shuffling the features of objects has little impact on access to their locations. Both of these predictions were confirmed in Experiments 1 and 2. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that this feature-location distinction remains when the task involves the detection of changes to old objects rather than the coding of new objects. Experiments 5 and 6 showed that, in a prespecified set, one missing location can be readily detected, but detecting one missing color is difficult. Taken together, multiple locations seem to be accessed and represented together as a holistic pattern, but features have to be handled as separate labels, one at a time, and do not constitute a pattern in featural space.
It is known that the efficiency of visual search for a target item among distractor items increases when distractors are similar to each other and decreases when target and distractors are similar. Here we show that symmetry relations between targets and distractors can alter search efficiency. When distractors form a background texture symmetrical about a vertical axis, search is easier than when they do not. In contrast, when some distractors are symmetrical with the target, search is more difficult than when they are not. These results suggest (1) that symmetry relations are processed in parallel and can help to distinguish a target from a distracting background and (2) that stimulus similarity can have several components even for a single feature (here, orientation).
In an effort to examine the flexibility with which attention can be allocated in visual space, we investigated whether subjects could selectively attend to multiple noncontiguous locations in the visual field We examined this issue by precuing two separate areas of the visual field and requiring subjects to decide whether the letters that appeared in these locations matched or mismatched while distractors that primed either the match or mismatch response were presented between the cued locations If the distractors had no effect on performance, it would provide evidence that subjects can divide attention over noncontiguous areas of space Subjects were able to ignore the distractors when the targets and distractors were presented as nononset stimuli (i e, when premasks were changed into the targets and distractors) In contrast, when the targets and distractors were presented as sudden-onset stimuli, subjects were unable to ignore the distractors These results begin to define the conditions under which attention can be flexibly deployed to multiple noncontiguous locations in the visual field. © 1995, Association for Psychological Science. All rights reserved.
Target objects presented within color images of naturalis- tic scenes were deleted or rotated during a saccade to or from the tar- get object or to a control region of the scene. Despite instructions to memorize the details of the scenes and to monitor for object changes, viewers frequently failed to notice the changes. However, the failure to detect change was mediated by three other important factors: First, accuracy generally increased as the distance between the changing region and the fixation immediately before or after the change decreased. Second, changes were sometimes initially missed, but sub- sequently noticed when the changed region was later refixated. Third, when an object disappeared from a scene, detection of that disap- pearance was greatly improved when the deletion occurred during the saccade toward that object. These results suggest that fixation position and saccade direction play an important role in determining whether changes will be detected. It appears that more information can be retained across views than has been suggested by previous studies. Subjective experience leads viewers to believe that their visual sys- tem delivers a complete and veridical representation of the scene before them—a representation akin to a relatively detailed color pho- tograph. This phenomenology forms the basis for the majority of the- oretical work in both human and machine vision. A constraint on