Action relationships concatenate representations of separate objects in the ventral visual system

Roberts, Keith; Humphreys, Glyn W.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.044

Cited by 69 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Together with the absence of grouping effects in LO in the current study, these previous findings suggest a special status of object grouping based on action relations (26). Future studies are needed to test this notion, directly comparing effects of grouping based on realworld regularities, action cues (23,24), and more basic perceptual cues (27)(28)(29)(30).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

“…None of our regions of interest (ROIs) showed such a difference, and no regions were found in a whole-brain analysis testing for the main effect of pair configuration (SI Text). Previous work that tested for response differences as a function of action relations between objects (e.g., a hammer positioned to hit a nail) provided evidence for greater LO activity to interacting objects than to noninteracting objects (23,24). Patient and transcranial magnetic stimulation studies further showed that action relationships are processed independently of attentional influences from parietal cortex (25,26).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Object grouping based on real-world regularities facilitates perception by reducing competitive interactions in visual cortex

Kaiser

Stein

Peelen

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In virtually every real-life situation humans are confronted with complex and cluttered visual environments that contain a multitude of objects. Because of the limited capacity of the visual system, objects compete for neural representation and cognitive processing resources. Previous work has shown that such attentional competition is partly object based, such that competition among elements is reduced when these elements perceptually group into an object based on low-level cues. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI) and behavioral measures, we show that the attentional benefit of grouping extends to higher-level grouping based on the relative position of objects as experienced in the real world. An fMRI study designed to measure competitive interactions among objects in human visual cortex revealed reduced neural competition between objects when these were presented in commonly experienced configurations, such as a lamp above a table, relative to the same objects presented in other configurations. In behavioral visual search studies, we then related this reduced neural competition to improved target detection when distracter objects were shown in regular configurations. Control studies showed that low-level grouping could not account for these results. We interpret these findings as reflecting the grouping of objects based on higher-level spatialrelational knowledge acquired through a lifetime of seeing objects in specific configurations. This interobject grouping effectively reduces the number of objects that compete for representation and thereby contributes to the efficiency of real-world perception.object perception | visual regularity | biased competition | chunking | natural scenes

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Object grouping based on real-world regularities facilitates perception by reducing competitive interactions in visual cortex

Kaiser

Stein

Peelen

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This suggests that perceptual grouping of interacting objects could result from a visual response to the stimuli without any requirement for a visuomotor response. Neuroimaging data from our laboratory suggest that this may be the case (Roberts & Humphreys, 2010a). We found that viewing objects that were correctly versus incorrectly positioned for action led to increased activation in ventral visual areas (lateral occipital complex and fusiform gyrus), but found no evidence for changes in activation in the more dorsal visuomotor regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 56%

Action relations facilitate the identification of briefly-presented objects

Roberts

Humphreys

2010

Atten Percept Psychophys

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The link between perception and action allows us to interact fluently with the world. Objects which 'afford' an action elicit a visuomotor response, facilitating compatible responses. In addition, positioning objects to interact with one another appears to facilitate grouping, indicated by patients with extinction being better able to identify interacting objects (e.g. a corkscrew going towards the top of a wine bottle) than the same objects when positioned incorrectly for action (Riddoch, Humphreys, Edwards, Baker, & Willson, Nature Neuroscience, 6, 82-89, 2003). Here, we investigate the effect of action relations on the perception of normal participants. We found improved identification of briefly-presented objects when in correct versus incorrect co-locations for action. For the object that would be 'active' in the interaction (the corkscrew), this improvement was enhanced when it was oriented for use by the viewer's dominant hand. In contrast, the positionrelated benefit for the 'passive' object was stronger when the objects formed an action-related pair (corkscrew and bottle) compared with an unrelated pair (corkscrew and candle), and it was reduced when spatial cues disrupted grouping between the objects. We propose that these results indicate two separate effects of action relations on normal perception: a visuomotor response to objects which strongly afford an action; and a grouping effect between objects which form action-related pairs.

show abstract

“…These data are highly consistent with the neuropsychological findings on extinction. First, the results of Roberts & Humphreys [19] show that the differential neural response to pairs of interacting objects is unaffected by whether or not participants attend to the stimuli. Second, the data indicate that interfering with brain activity in the PPC (using TMS) does not disrupt the beneficial effects of interacting objects [21].…”

Section: Visual and Motor Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attending to the possibilities of action

Humphreys

Kumar

Yoon

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Actions taking place in the environment are critical for our survival. We review evidence on attention to action, drawing on sets of converging evidence from neuropsychological patients through to studies of the time course and neural locus of action-based cueing of attention in normal observers. We show that the presence of action relations between stimuli helps reduce visual extinction in patients with limited attention to the contralesional side of space, while the first saccades made by normal observers and early perceptual and attentional responses measured using electroencephalography/event-related potentials are modulated by preparation of action and by seeing objects being grasped correctly or incorrectly for action. With both normal observers and patients, there is evidence for two components to these effects based on both visual perceptual and motor-based responses. While the perceptual responses reflect factors such as the visual familiarity of the action-related information, the motor response component is determined by factors such as the alignment of the objects with the observer's effectors and not by the visual familiarity of the stimuli. In addition to this, we suggest that action relations between stimuli can be coded pre-attentively, in the absence of attention to the stimulus, and action relations cue perceptual and motor responses rapidly and automatically. At present, formal theories of visual attention are not set up to account for these action-related effects; we suggest ways that theories could be expected to enable action effects to be incorporated.

show abstract

Action relationships concatenate representations of separate objects in the ventral visual system

Cited by 69 publications

References 36 publications

Object grouping based on real-world regularities facilitates perception by reducing competitive interactions in visual cortex

Object grouping based on real-world regularities facilitates perception by reducing competitive interactions in visual cortex

Action relations facilitate the identification of briefly-presented objects

Attending to the possibilities of action

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About