The Influence of Gestalt Grouping Principles on Active Visual Representations: Neurophysiological Evidence
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Date
2011-06
Authors
McCollough, Andrew Willis, 1974-
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
The cognitive ability to group information into chunks is a well known phenomenon, however, the effects of chunking on visual representations is not well understood. Here we investigate the effects of visual chunking using Gestalt grouping principles in two tasks: visual working memory change detection and multiple object tracking. Though both these tasks have been used to study cognitive functions in the past, including object-based attention, attentional control and working memory capacity, the effect of grouping on mental representations in these tasks has not been well characterized. That is, while researches have measured effects of grouping on behavioral output in similar tasks, there are few studies of the effects of grouping on neurophysiological indices of object representations. Indeed, these current studies are the first to use event-related potentials (ERPs) to elucidate the effect of grouping on active mental representations of visual stimuli. In the visual working memory task, observers remembered either the color or orientation of pacman stimuli across a delay. We manipulated the collinearity of these objects, whether or not they formed a Kanizsa triangle figure, and measured the behavioral and electrophysiological effects. In the multiple object tracking task, a subset of identical stimuli were briefly cued as targets and then their motion was tracked by participants. We manipulated whether and which Gestalt heuristics were used to bind targets together during their motion and measured the effects on behavior and electrophysiology. In both tasks we compared the grouped to ungrouped conditions. We found that across experiments and tasks behavioral performance was enhanced in grouping conditions compared to ungrouped conditions. Furthermore, the waveforms evoked by grouped stimuli were reduced compared to waveforms produced in response to locally identical but ungrouped stimuli. These data suggest that the mental representation of visual objects may be reshaped moment-by-moment by grouping cues or task demand, giving rise to a flexible, active and dynamic yet parsimonious representation of the visual world.
Description
xiii, 143 p. : ill. (some col.)
Keywords
Psychology, Neurosciences, Attention, Electrophysiology, ERP, Gestalt, Kanizsa, Visual Working Memory