Resolving visual motion through perceptual gaps

Teichmann, Lina; Edwards, Grace; Baker, Chris I.

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.07.017

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 140 publications

(166 reference statements)

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“…More specifically, on one hand, research on infant cognition has revealed that 3.5-to-5-months-old infants readily expect objects to continue to exist when occluded [9][10][11][12] , 4.5-to-6.5-month-old infants are sensitive to spatiotemporal properties of causal collision events 36,37 and 3.5-to-5-month-old infants expect objects to not pass through each other [9][10][11][12] . On the other hand, research on adult vision has shown that the visual system can represent dynamic objects moving through occlusion 8,38 , is tuned to Newtonian mechanics in causal collision events 6,[39][40][41][42] (and unsurprisingly other physical regularities that go beyond the infant repertoire such as balance 7,43 , friction 44 and so on). Therefore, object solidity constitutes a missing piece in the diverse landscape of physical expectations underlying adult vision: Despite being a basic physical law of our world and emerging early in infant cognition, solidity is yet to be shown to operate in adult vision.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solid as a rock: Solidity shapes the perception of object motion

Bai¹,

Strickland²

2023

Preprint

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The human visual system is endowed with prior expectations about physical regularities it routinely perceives. One basic regularity of our world is that of “object solidity”: Solid objects cannot pass through each other. Is object solidity internalized in the visual system? Here we provide convincing evidence across four behavioral experiments that the adult human visual system uses solidity to compute object motion. Our experiments demonstrate that when viewing ambiguous motion displays compatible with multiple interpretations, the visual system strongly favors interpretations which respect the physical law of solidity over those that violate it. Further demonstrating the robustness of this effect, we discovered that even in the presence of other motion and depth cues, solidity remains robust and continues to bias the perception of motion. Together, our results demonstrate for the first time that the visual system integrates solidity in its computations of object motion.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solid as a rock: Solidity shapes the perception of object motion

Bai¹,

Strickland²

2023

Preprint

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“…The activations observed in early visual and parietal regions overlap with areas that have been shown to process occluded motion (Ban et al, 2013 ; Erlikhman & Caplovitz, 2017 ; Olson et al, 2004 ; Shuwairi et al, 2007 ). These regions are thought to keep track of a moving object's position through perceptual gaps by retaining information about its direction and speed prior to the occlusion and using this information to predict the time and location of its reappearance (Teichmann et al, 2021 ). Moreover, the identified activity in the dorsal premotor cortex, superior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus and early visual areas (spanning over V1, V2 and V3) is consistent with regions that are typically involved in visual imagery (Winlove et al, 2018 ), and that have previously been shown to be involved in intuitive physical inference (Fischer et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical inference of falling objects involves simulation of occluded trajectories in early visual areas

Zbären,

Meissner,

Kapur

et al. 2023

Human Brain Mapping

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Humans possess an intuitive understanding of the environment's physical properties and dynamics, which allows them to predict the outcomes of physical scenarios and successfully interact with the physical world. This predictive ability is thought to rely on mental simulations and has been shown to involve frontoparietal areas. Here, we investigate whether such mental simulations may be accompanied by visual imagery of the predicted physical scene. We designed an intuitive physical inference task requiring participants to infer the parabolic trajectory of an occluded ball falling in accordance with Newtonian physics. Participants underwent fMRI while (i) performing the physical inference task alternately with a visually matched control task, and (ii) passively observing falling balls depicting the trajectories that had to be inferred during the physical inference task. We found that performing the physical inference task activates early visual areas together with a frontoparietal network when compared with the control task. Using multivariate pattern analysis, we show that these regions contain information specific to the trajectory of the occluded ball (i.e., fall direction), despite the absence of visual inputs. Using a cross‐classification approach, we further show that in early visual areas, trajectory‐specific activity patterns evoked by the physical inference task resemble those evoked by the passive observation of falling balls. Together, our findings suggest that participants simulated the ball trajectory when solving the task, and that the outcome of these simulations may be represented in form of the perceivable sensory consequences in early visual areas.

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“…First, all occlusions are treated alike regardless of their duration ( object recovery ). People employ mechanisms similar to those employed for brief occlusions (Teichmann et al, 2021), relying on motion information and extrapolating objects’ future locations or alternatively relying on proximity cues (Franconeri et al, 2012; Horowitz et al, 2006; Scholl & Pylyshyn, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple object tracking with extended occlusions

Lukavský

Oksama

Děchtěrenko

2022

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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In everyday life, we often view objects through a limited aperture (e.g., soccer players on TV or cars slipping into our blind spot on a busy road), where objects often move out of view and reappear in a different place later. We modelled this situation in a series of multiple object tracking (MOT) experiments, in which we introduced a cover on the edges of the observed area and manipulated its width. This method introduced systematic occlusions, which were longer than those used in previous MOT studies. Experiment 1 (N=50) showed that tracking under such conditions is possible, although difficult. An item-level analysis confirmed that people made more errors in targets that were covered longer and more often. In Experiment 2 (N=50) we manipulated the tracking workload and found that the participants were less affected by the cover when the tracking load was low. In Experiment 3 (N=50), we asked the participants to keep track of the objects’ identities (multiple identity tracking; MIT). Although MIT is subjectively more demanding, memorising identities improved performance in the most difficult cover conditions. Contrary to previous reports, we also found that even partial occlusions negatively affected tracking.

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Resolving visual motion through perceptual gaps

Cited by 8 publications

References 140 publications

Solid as a rock: Solidity shapes the perception of object motion

Solid as a rock: Solidity shapes the perception of object motion

Physical inference of falling objects involves simulation of occluded trajectories in early visual areas

Multiple object tracking with extended occlusions

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