scholarly journals Relational processing demands and the role of spatial context in the construction of episodic simulations.

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (8) ◽  
pp. 1424-1441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Wiebels ◽  
Donna Rose Addis ◽  
David Moreau ◽  
Valerie van Mulukom ◽  
Kelsey E. Onderdijk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Context ◽  
Relational Processing ◽  
Processing Demands

scholarly journals Relational processing demands and the role of spatial context in the construction of episodic simulations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Wiebels ◽  
Donna Rose Addis ◽  
David Moreau ◽  
Valerie van Mulukom ◽  
Kelsey Esmé Onderdijk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Relational Processing ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Episodic Simulation ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Event Representations ◽  
First Time

Reports on differences between remembering the past and imagining the future have led to the hypothesis that constructing future events is a more cognitively demanding process. However, factors that influence these increased demands, such as whether the event has been previously constructed and the types of details comprising the event, have remained relatively unexplored. Across two experiments, we examined how these factors influence the process of constructing event representations by having participants repeatedly construct events and measuring how construction times and a range of phenomenological ratings changed across time points. In Experiment 1, we contrasted the construction of past and future events and found that, relative to past events, the constructive demands associated with future events are particularly heightened when these events are imagined for the first time. Across repeated simulations, future events became increasingly similar to past events in terms of construction times and incorporated detail. In Experiment 2, participants imagined future events involving two memory details (person, location) and then reimagined the event either i) exactly the same, ii) with a different person, or iii) in a different location. We predicted that if generating spatial information is particularly important for event construction, a change in location will have the greatest impact on constructive demands. Results showed that spatial context contributed to these heightened constructive demands more so than person details, consistent with theories highlighting the central role of spatial processing in episodic simulation. We discuss the findings from both studies in the light of relational processing demands and consider implications for current theoretical frameworks.

The Role of Space in the Formation of Social Ties

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario L. Small ◽  
Laura Adler
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Social Ties ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Spatial Composition ◽  
Architecture And Design

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the relation between networks and spatial context. This review examines critically a selection of the literature on how physical space affects the formation of social ties. Different aspects of this question have been a feature in network analysis, neighborhood research, geography, organizational science, architecture and design, and urban planning. Focusing primarily on work at the meso- and microlevels of analysis, we pay special attention to studies examining spatial processes in neighborhood and organizational contexts. We argue that spatial context plays a role in the formation of social ties through at least three mechanisms, spatial propinquity, spatial composition, and spatial configuration; that fully capturing the role of spatial context will require multiple disciplinary perspectives and both qualitative and quantitative research; and that both methodological and conceptual questions central to the role of space in networks remain to be answered. We conclude by identifying major challenges in this work and proposing areas for future research.

Perceptual Organization and White's Illusion

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p3216 ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barton L Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Organization ◽  
Context Dependence ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
New Method ◽  
Low Level ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Apparent Lightness

The apparent lightness of a surface can be strongly modulated by the spatial context in which it is embedded. Early theories of such context dependence emphasized the role of low-level mechanisms that sense border contrast, whereas a number of recent authors have emphasized the role of perceptual organization in determining perceived lightness. One of the simplest and most theoretically challenging lightness illusions was described by White. This illusion has been explained with a variety of different models, ranging from low-level filter outputs to computations underlying the extraction of mid-level representations of surfaces. Here, I present a new method for determining the organizational forces that shape this illusion. I show that the spatial context of White's pattern not only transforms the apparent lightness of homogeneous target patches, but can also induce dramatic inversions of figure–ground relationships of textured target regions. These phenomena provide new evidence for the role of scission in causing the lightness illusion experienced in White's effect.

scholarly journals Focusing on what matters: Modulation of the human hippocampus by relational attention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia I. Córdova ◽  
Nicholas B. Turk-Browne ◽  
Mariam Aly
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
The Other ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Relational Processing ◽  
Relational Information ◽  
Dynamic Display ◽  
Pattern Similarity ◽  
Online Extraction

AbstractHippocampal episodic memory is fundamentally relational, consisting of links between events and the spatial and temporal contexts in which they occurred. Such relations are also important over much shorter time periods, during online visual perception. For example, how do we assess the relative spatial positions of objects, their temporal order, or the relationship between their features? Here, we investigate the role of the hippocampus in such online relational processing by manipulating visual attention to different kinds of relations in a dynamic display. While undergoing high-resolution fMRI, participants viewed two images in rapid succession on each trial and performed one of three relational tasks, judging the images’ relative: spatial positions, temporal onsets, or sizes. As a control, they sometimes also judged whether one image was tilted, irrespective of the other; this served as a baseline item task with no demands on relational processing. All hippocampal regions of interest (CA1, CA2/3/DG, subiculum) showed reliable deactivation when participants attended to relational vs. item information. Attention to temporal relations was associated with more robust deactivation than the other conditions. One possible interpretation of such deactivation is that it reflects hippocampal disengagement. If true, there should be reduced information content and noisier, less reliable patterns of activity in the hippocampus for the temporal vs. other tasks. Instead, analyses of multivariate activity patterns revealed more stable hippocampal representations in the temporal task. Additional analyses showed that this increased pattern similarity was not simply a reflection of the lower univariate activity. Thus, the hippocampus differentiates between relational and item processing even during online visual perception, and its representations of temporal relations in particular are robust and stable. Together, these findings suggest that the relational computations of the hippocampus, known to be important for memory, extend beyond this purpose, enabling the rapid online extraction of relational information in visual perception.

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