Some temporal characteristics of visual pattern perception.

Eriksen, Charles W.; Collins, James F.

doi:10.1037/h0024765

Cited by 305 publications

(205 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…When superimposed, these patterns formed a nonsense syllable. Eriksen and Collins (1967) found that subjects could temporally integrate the two dot patterns to perceive the nonsense syllable over intervals as long as 100 ms, yielding an estimate of visible persistence duration approximating that obtained from partial report.As a result of studies like these, almost all contemporary models of visual information processing now assume the existence of a very short-term visual memory, which stores the contents of a visual display for some period of time after its offset.Until quite recently, the characteristics of this memory (usually 343 …”

mentioning

confidence: 87%

Sensory registration and informational persistence.

Irwin¹,

Yeomans²

1986

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

112

145

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The traditional view of iconic memory as a precategorical, high-capacity, quickly decaying visible memory has recently come under attack (e.g., Coltheart, 1980). Specifically, distinctions have been drawn between visible persistence, or the phenomenal trace of an extinguished stimulus, and informational persistence, knowledge about the visual properties of the stimulus. In the present research we tested two alternative conceptions of informational persistence. One conception is that visual information persists in a visual memory that begins at stimulus offset and lasts for 150-300 ms, independently of exposure duration. The second is that informational persistence arises from a nonvisual memory that contains spatial coordinates for displayed items along with identity codes for those items. Three experiments were conducted in which 3X3 letter arrays were presented for durations ranging from 50 to 500 ms. A single character mask presented at varying intervals after array offset cued report of an entire row of the array. Comparison of the cued row's masked and unmasked letters revealed that spatially-specific visual (i.e., maskable) information persisted after stimulus offset, regardless of exposure duration. This result favors the visual conception of informational persistence. But there was also support for the nonvisual conception: Accuracy increased and item intrusion errors decreased as stimulus duration increased. The implications of these results for models of informational persistence and for transsaccadic integration during reading are discussed.It has been known at least since Aristotle's time (384-322 B.C.) that visual sensation persists after stimulus offset (Allen, 1926). Contemporary interest in this property of the visual system was revived by Sperling (1960). In Sperling's experiments, subjects were presented an array of letters for some brief time.Following stimulus offset, a subset of the information in the array was cued for report. Sperling found that subjects' recall performance for the cued information was very high if the cue was presented within about 100 ms or so of stimulus offset. Furthermore, recall accuracy decreased as the time between stimulus offset and presentation of the recall cue increased. These results contrasted with performance when subjects were asked to report the entire array of letters. In this case, recall performance was limited to only a few items from the array. Taken together, Experiments I and 2 were part of a senior honors thesis submitted by the second author, under the direction of the first author, to Cornell University. Experiment 2 was presented at the 25th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, San Antonio, lexas, November 1984. Experiment 3 and the preparation of the manuscript were supported by an AllUruversity Research Initiation Grant from Michigan State University to the first author, and also by National Science Foundation Grant BNS 85-19580 to the first author.We thank Kathryn Bock, Joseph Brown, Thomas Carr, Lester Hyman, James Zacks, and Rose Zac...

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mentioning

confidence: 87%

Sensory registration and informational persistence.

Irwin¹,

Yeomans²

1986

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

112

145

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“…The literature on perceptual integration suggests two possibilities. One class of models focuses on mechanisms that determine retention, or visibility, of the first array (e.g., Eriksen & Collins, 1967;Di Lollo & Hogben, 1985, 1987Groner et al, 1990). According to this approach, a stimulus remains visible for a short period of time following a brief visual presentation (i.e., visible persistence).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To do this, we used the temporal integration paradigm originally developed by Eriksen and Collins (1967) to explore the integration of two individual percepts (see also Di Lollo, 1980;Di Lollo & Hogben, 1987;Di Lollo, Hogben, & Dixon, 1994;Loftus & Irwin, 1998). During the temporal integration procedure, a stimulus is divided into two parts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal integration between visual images and visual percepts.

Brockmole¹,

Wang²,

Irwin³

2002

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

128

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Using a temporal integration task, subjects in 5 experiments were expected to combine information from temporally separated visual presentations. Evidence from these experiments indicated that perceptual information can be integrated with previously generated and currently maintained visual images to form a representation that contains information from each source. Properties and limitations of this integration process were also explored, including the time required to generated the image, the speed at which percepts were integrated with images, and the capacity of the representation. Implications for theories of visual processing and memory are discussed.Phenomenologically, visual images and visual percepts are alike in many respects.1 This apparent similarity has led to a great deal of research assessing the parallels between images and percepts by searching for common structural properties of percept-based and image-based representations as well as shared neurological substrates between the visual perception and imagery systems. For example, considerable research has demonstrated that both images and percepts encode spatial dimensions and spatial relations among objects (e.g., Farah, 1985;Finke & Pinker, 1982;Kosslyn, 1973Kosslyn, , 1978Kosslyn, Ball, & Reiser, 1978;Pinker, 1980;Pinker & Kosslyn, 1978;Weber & Harnish, 1974). In addition, decision times for comparison of two imagined objects correspond to those for two perceived objects (e.g., Moyer & Bayer, 1976;Paivio, 1975). Like visual perception, visual images are limited in spatial resolution in that the amount of information contained in an image is constrained by the imagined object's size and distance (e.g., Kosslyn, 1975Kosslyn, , 1976Kosslyn, , 1978Weber & Malmstrom, 1979) as well as eccentricity in the imagined visual field (e.g., Finke & Kosslyn, 1980;Finke & Kurtzman, 1981b). Furthermore, just as closer visual inspection of an object from different points of view reveals previously unrecognized properties of the object, there is some evidence that manipulation of mental images can also reveal patterns in the image not apparent when the image was originally formed (e.g., Brandimonte, Hitch, & Bishop, 1992;Pinker & Finke, 1980), although it appears that such insight is more difficult with images than with percepts (e.g., Chambers & Reisberg, 1985).The behavioral findings that suggest that image-based and percept-based representations share a common structure are complemented by research that has shown that visual imagery relies upon some of the same neural machinery as visual perception and generates similar patterns of neural activation.2 For example, using a radioactive marker to observe cerebral blood flow, Roland and Friberg (1985) determined that imagining an object is associated with activation in the occipital, posterior superior parietal, and posterior inferior temporal lobes, all of which are involved in perceptual processing (see also Goldenberg et al., 1989). In addition, using positron emission tomography, Kosslyn and his colleagues (Ko...

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“…According to this theory, the contours of the temporally leading display are stored in a sensory register (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968), also called iconic store (Neisser, 1967), whose contents fade over several hundred milliseconds from the termination of the inducing stimulus. If the temporal gap does not exceed the duration of iconic persistence, the two displays will be seen as temporally overlapping, because the fading icon of the first will still be perceptually available at the time the second is presented (Eriksen & Collins, 1967;Haber, 1971).…”

Section: Temporal Integration In Visual Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal integration in visual memory.

Lollo¹

1980

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

409

309

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SUMMARYIconic memory has often been likened to a sensory store whose contents drain away rapidly as soon as the inducing stimulus is turned off. Instances of short-lived visible persistence have been explained in terms of the decaying contents of iconic store. A fundamental requirement of this storage model is that strength of persistence should be a decreasing function of time elapsed since the cessation-not since the onset-of the inducing stimulation. That is, strength of visible persistence may be directly related-but not inversely related-to the duration of the inducing stimulus.Two complementary paradigms were utilized in the present studies. In the first paradigm performance was facilitated by visible persistence in that the task required the bridging of a temporal gap between two successive displays. In the second paradigm (forward visual masking by pattern), performance was impaired by lingering visible persistence of the temporally leading mask. Both paradigms yielded evidence of an inverse relationship between duration of inducing stimulus and duration of visible persistence.More specifically, in a task requiring temporal integration of a pattern displayed briefly in two successive portions, performance was severely impaired if the duration of the leading part exceeded about 100 msec. This suggests an inverse relationship between duration of inducing stimulus and duration of sensory persistence and allows the inference that visual persistence may be identified more fittingly with ongoing neural processes than with the decaying contents of an iconic store. In keeping with this suggestion, two experiments disconfirmed the conjecture that lack of temporal integration following long inducing stimuli could be ascribed to emergence of unitary form separately in the two portions of the display or to the triggering of some sort of discontinuity detection mechanism within the visual system. In added support of a "processing" model, two further studies showed that the severity of forward masking by pattern declines sharply as the duration of the leading mask is increased.This pattern of results is equally unsupportive of a storage theory of iconic persistence as of perceptual moment theory in any of its versions. This is so because both theories regard interstimulus interval rather than stimulus-onset asynchrony as the crucial factor in temporal integration. Neither can the results be explained in terms of receptor adaptation or of metacontrast suppression. The theory of inhibitory channel interactions can encompass the more prominent aspects of the results but fails to account for foveal suppression and for some crucial temporal effects.

show abstract

Some temporal characteristics of visual pattern perception.

Cited by 305 publications

References 11 publications

Sensory registration and informational persistence.

Sensory registration and informational persistence.

Temporal integration between visual images and visual percepts.

Temporal integration in visual memory.

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