Parts of recognition

Hoffman, Donald D.; Richards, Whitman

doi:10.1016/0010-0277(84)90022-2

Cited by 1,246 publications

(886 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In contrast, LOC showed a higher response on the part task than the spacing task for both faces and houses (see figure 4). These findings resonate with theories of object recognition, which emphasize the role of parts in representations of object shape (Hoffman & Richards 1984;Biederman 1987), and contrast sharply with theories of face processing, which emphasize holistic representations.…”

Section: Areal Specificity: Do Representations In the Ffa Differ Fromsupporting

confidence: 71%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,374

946

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Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person's identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze. The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors. Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis). Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA).Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work. The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose ('domain-specific') mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (e.g. faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose ('domain-general') mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information. Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind. Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology. This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others).Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA. We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect).Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in §6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the ques...

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Section: Areal Specificity: Do Representations In the Ffa Differ Fromsupporting

confidence: 71%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,374

946

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“…Nevertheless, when visually perceiving a red square we do not experience it as having these various potential parts unless some additional borders are added, which allow us to distinguish them. This intuition is in accordance with the main psychological models of visual parts perception which claim that fragments of objects are recognized as parts if they are separated by edges or if the outline of a figure creates points of convexity (like in a case of an hour-glass shape, Hoffman and Richards 1984;Xu and Singh 2002). In other words, relying on the minimal notion of VO, proper spatial parts of VO are those of their spatial fragments that themselves are VO.…”

Section: Temporal Partssupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Investigations concerning part-structure of VO should formulate the notion of perceptual parts relaying on how human vision divides objects into parts and not on how we can conceptualize the structure of objects using some postperceptual abilities. From this perspective, the liberal notion of perceptual parts is not consistent with the major psychological models of part perception which, relying on behavioural data, claim that part-structure is determined by the represented edges (e.g., Hoffman and Richards 1984;Xu and Singh 2002). In addition, such a broader notion does not fit well with models of visual attention.…”

Section: Temporal Partsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Visual Endurance and Auditory Perdurance

Skrzypulec

2018

Erkenn

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“…In some views, the Hoffding step is simplified somewhat by the prior identification of figure-ground relationships (or, in Marr's terminology, of the "2lh -D sketch' '), so that attention can then be directed to identifying the figural region (Neisser, 1967). Accordingly, within current theoretical frameworks, the Hoffding step is accomplished by first identifying the figure, then partitioning the contour into parts delimited by concave regions (as defined from inside the figure), and mapping the resultant parts onto the best-fitting combination of representational components in shape memory (e.g., Biederman, 1987;Hoffman & Richards, 1985;Marr, 1982).…”

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confidence: 99%

The initial identification of figure-ground relationships: Contributions from shape recognition processes

Peterson

Gibson

1991

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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We tested whether shape recognition computations contribute to the initial determination of figure and ground by asking observers to report about which region of briefly exposed masked stimuli appeared to be figure. The region on one side of a figure-ground contour always denoted a meaningful shape. In full versions of the stimuli, Gestalt variables favored the other, less denotative, region; in half versions of the stimuli, Gestalt variables were absent. If shape recognition inputs do not contribute to figure-ground computations, the less denotative region should be seen as figure in the full stimuli, and both regions should be seen as figure equally often in the half stimuli. Results show otherwise, suggesting that shape recognition routines do contribute to the initial determination of figure and ground, provided they have been completed, which seems to require approximately 150 msec for canonically oriented stimuli.Perceptual theories must take a position on the question of when, in the stream of visual processing, pattern identification occurs. Most recent theorists have chosen to assume that figure-ground organization precedes shape recognition (e.g., Biederman, 1987;Marr, 1982), reasoning that one cannot recognize a shape until one has perceived it.The process of perceiving a shape includes the determination of figure-ground relationships. Indeed, the ability to recognize a shape is coupled to figure-ground organization in that the region to which the figure-ground contour is assigned has shape and meaning, whereas the other region is shapeless and simply appears to continue behind the figural region, as the Rubin vase/faces stimulus demonstrates.The Gestalt theorists proposed that the assignment of a figure-ground contour is governed by a number of variables, aU of which can be measured on the physical stimulus. Using displays devoid of meaningful shapes, they showed a tendency for figure-ground contours to be assigned to regions that were symmetric, enclosed, more convex, or smaller in area, thereby demonstrating that figure-ground relationships can be determined without shape recognition input. However, because the meaningfulness of the shape denoted by the regions competing for the figure-ground contour was not manipulated, those experiments do not show that figure-ground computations cannot weigh shape recognition inputs.

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Parts of recognition

Cited by 1,246 publications

References 19 publications

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Visual Endurance and Auditory Perdurance

The initial identification of figure-ground relationships: Contributions from shape recognition processes

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