Configural Processing at Birth: Evidence for Perceptual Organisation

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p2858 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-372
Author(s):  
Teresa Farroni ◽  
Eloisa Valenza ◽  
Francesca Simion ◽  
Carlo Umiltà
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Pattern ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Gestalt Principles ◽  
Global Configuration

We report a series of ten experiments aimed to investigate the newborn's ability to discriminate the components of a visual pattern and to process the visual information that specifies the global configuration of a stimulus. The results reveal that: (i) newborn babies are able to distinguish individual elements of a stimulus (experiments 1A, IB, 1C, and ID); (ii) they can group individual elements into a holistic percept on the basis of Gestalt principles (experiments 2A and 3A); (iii) their spontaneous preferences cannot be easily modified by habituation (experiments 2B and 3B); and (iv) when horizontal stimuli are paired with vertical stimuli, they prefer the horizontal ones (experiments 4A and 4B).

Configural Processing Hypothesis and Face-Inversion Effect

2010 ◽  
pp. 316-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam S. Rakover ◽  
Sam S. Rakover
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Inversion Effect ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Face Inversion Effect ◽  
Configural Information ◽  
Face Inversion ◽  
Geometrical Illusions ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Difference

Perception and recognition of faces presented upright are better than Perception and recognition of faces presented inverted. The difference between upright and inverted orientations is greater in face recognition than in non-face object recognition. This Face-Inversion Effect is explained by the “Configural Processing” hypothesis that inversion disrupts configural information processing and leaves the featural information intact. The present chapter discusses two important findings that cast doubt on this hypothesis: inversion impairs recognition of isolated features (hair & forehead, and eyes), and certain facial configural information is not affected by inversion. The chapter focuses mainly on the latter finding, which reveals a new type of facial configural information, the “Eye-Illusion”, which is based on certain geometrical illusions. The Eye-Illusion tended to resist inversion in experimental tasks of both perception and recognition. It resisted inversion also when its magnitude was reduced. Similar results were obtained with “Headlight-Illusion” produced on a car‘s front, and with “Form-Illusion” produced in geometrical forms. However, the Eye-Illusion was greater than the Headlight-Illusion, which in turn was greater than the Form-Illusion. These findings were explained by the “General Visual-Mechanism” hypothesis in terms of levels of visual information learning. The chapter proposes that a face is composed of various kinds of configural information that are differently impaired by inversion: from no effect (the Eye-Illusion) to a large effect (the Face-Inversion Effect).

Visualizing Ignorance

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-345
Author(s):  
Marcel J. Boumans
Keyword(s):  
Normal Distribution ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Gestalt Principles ◽  
Probabilistic Distribution ◽  
Bank Of England ◽  
The Common

Abstract The Bank of England fan chart of inflation visualizes the uncertainty of the bank’s inflation projections. Visualization is a way to tame uncertainty, in the sense that uncertainty is brought under the measure of a probabilistic distribution, in this case a (two-piece) normal distribution. As such, taming is a process of homogenization, that is, a process of translating various heterogeneous items into a common medium. In this case, the common medium is a specific curve, the shape of which is determined by principles of ignorance: one starts with a simple symmetrical and smooth shape, and deviates from it if there is reason to. These principles of visualization work epistemologically in the same way that gestalt principles are used to perceptually structure visual information. This article shows that the principles of symmetry, proximity, and smoothness are the underlying heuristics that shapes the unknown future into a fan chart.

scholarly journals Relationship between users age and visual patterns in digital media

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 164-172
Author(s):  
Mario Plenković ◽  
Daria Mustić
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Information Quality ◽  
User Behavior ◽  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Visual Pattern ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Information User ◽  
Research User ◽  
The Way

The purpose of this paper is to investigate is there a relation between age and the way that people are using digital media content. By developing information and communication technology in the field of media communications, media con-tent users are able to use more visual information of the same content, affecting the success of decoding the message and users can also manipulate part of the visual presentation by adapting the user interface to their visual needs. This puts the user in the position of the designer of the visual content. The information user today partially takes the role of the creator of the visual aspect of the information, so it comes to repositioning in relation the graphic designer - the recipient of the message. The paper examines whether the age of the user has an impact on the visual pattern used in the digital content utilization. The research approach is qualitative and exploratory in nature, as the aim is to develop a model of information consumption for elderlies in digital environment in which the information quality is challenged by the way of user’s visual approach and visual pattern. Through the empirical part of the research, user behavior was investigated in the use of media web content. Although, there are some differences between two users groups divided by age, we can not claim that these differences are connected with age. The research has shown that the primary reason for certain visual pattern is interest for specific theme. Based on conducted theoretical analysis and empirical research it can be concluded that visual communication in a new, converging media environment is experiencing redefinition and enables rapid transition from status information per se to status per nos, but the interest for content is still dominant regulator of specific users navigation trought the content.

Development of Form Similarity as a Gestalt Grouping Principle in Infancy

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul C. Quinn ◽  
Ramesh S. Bhatt ◽  
Diana Brush ◽  
Autumn Grimes ◽  
Heather Sharpnack
Keyword(s):  
Processing Time ◽  
Visual Pattern ◽  
Novelty Preference ◽  
Gestalt Principles ◽  
Gestalt Principle ◽  
Young Infants ◽  
Gestalt Grouping ◽  
Time Courses ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Pattern Information

Given evidence demonstrating that infants 3 months of age and younger can utilize the Gestalt principle of lightness similarity to group visually presented elements into organized percepts, four experiments using the familiarization/novelty-preference procedure were conducted to determine whether infants can also organize visual pattern information in accord with the Gestalt principle of form similarity. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- to 7-month-olds, but not 3- to 4-month-olds, presented with generalization and discrimination tasks involving arrays of X and O elements responded as if they organized the elements into columns or rows based on form similarity. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the failure of the young infants to use form similarity was not due to insufficient processing time or the inability to discriminate between the individual X and O elements. The results suggest that different Gestalt principles may become functional over different time courses of development, and that not all principles are automatically deployed in the manner originally proposed by Gestalt theorists.

A Brain-Inspired Visual Pattern Recognition Architecture and Its Applications

2008 ◽  
pp. 244-264
Author(s):  
Fok Hing Chi Tivive ◽  
Abdesselam Bouzerdoum
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Feature Extraction ◽  
Real World ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Visual Pattern ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
Visual Pattern Recognition ◽  
Biophysical Mechanism ◽  
And Gender

With the ever-increasing utilization of imagery in scientific, industrial, civilian, and military applications, visual pattern recognition has been thriving as a research field and has become an essential enabling technology for many applications. In this chapter, we present a brain-inspired pattern recognition architecture that can easily be adapted to solve various real-world visual pattern recognition tasks. The architecture has the ability to extract visual features from images and classify them within the same network structure; in other words, it integrates the feature extraction stage with the classification stage, and both stages are optimized with respect to one another. The main processing unit for feature extraction is governed by a nonlinear biophysical mechanism known as shunting inhibition, which plays a significant role in visual information processing in the brain. Here, the proposed architecture is applied to four real-world visual pattern recognition problems; namely, handwritten digit recognition, texture segmentation, automatic face detection, and gender recognition. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed architecture is very competitive with and sometimes outperforms existing state-of-the-art techniques for each application.

Face Inversion Effect Emerges Under Critical Configural Discrepancy

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jisien Yang ◽  
Adrian Schwaninger
Keyword(s):  
Face Recognition ◽  
Face Processing ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Inversion Effect ◽  
Configural Processing ◽  
Major Contributor ◽  
Face Inversion Effect ◽  
Configural Information ◽  
Face Inversion ◽  
The Face

Configural processing has been considered the major contributor to the face inversion effect (FIE) in face recognition. However, most researchers have only obtained the FIE with one specific ratio of configural alteration. It remains unclear whether the ratio of configural alteration itself can mediate the occurrence of the FIE. We aimed to clarify this issue by manipulating the configural information parametrically using six different ratios, ranging from 4% to 24%. Participants were asked to judge whether a pair of faces were entirely identical or different. The paired faces that were to be compared were presented either simultaneously (Experiment 1) or sequentially (Experiment 2). Both experiments revealed that the FIE was observed only when the ratio of configural alteration was in the intermediate range. These results indicate that even though the FIE has been frequently adopted as an index to examine the underlying mechanism of face processing, the emergence of the FIE is not robust with any configural alteration but dependent on the ratio of configural alteration.

Investigating the Multimodal Nature of Human Communication

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silke Paulmann ◽  
Sarah Jessen ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz
Keyword(s):  
Visual Information ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Physical Property ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Channel Condition ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Early Processing ◽  
Related Potentials

The multimodal nature of human communication has been well established. Yet few empirical studies have systematically examined the widely held belief that this form of perception is facilitated in comparison to unimodal or bimodal perception. In the current experiment we first explored the processing of unimodally presented facial expressions. Furthermore, auditory (prosodic and/or lexical-semantic) information was presented together with the visual information to investigate the processing of bimodal (facial and prosodic cues) and multimodal (facial, lexic, and prosodic cues) human communication. Participants engaged in an identity identification task, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were being recorded to examine early processing mechanisms as reflected in the P200 and N300 component. While the former component has repeatedly been linked to physical property stimulus processing, the latter has been linked to more evaluative “meaning-related” processing. A direct relationship between P200 and N300 amplitude and the number of information channels present was found. The multimodal-channel condition elicited the smallest amplitude in the P200 and N300 components, followed by an increased amplitude in each component for the bimodal-channel condition. The largest amplitude was observed for the unimodal condition. These data suggest that multimodal information induces clear facilitation in comparison to unimodal or bimodal information. The advantage of multimodal perception as reflected in the P200 and N300 components may thus reflect one of the mechanisms allowing for fast and accurate information processing in human communication.

Situational Factors Competing for Attention

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiyu Zhang ◽  
Se-Hoon Jeong ◽  
Martin Fishbein†
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Situational Factors ◽  
Sexual Content ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
Explicit Content ◽  
Audio Information

This study investigates how multitasking interacts with levels of sexually explicit content to influence an individual’s ability to recognize TV content. A 2 (multitasking vs. nonmultitasking) by 3 (low, medium, and high sexual content) between-subjects experiment was conducted. The analyses revealed that multitasking not only impaired task performance, but also decreased TV recognition. An inverted-U relationship between degree of sexually explicit content and recognition of TV content was found, but only when subjects were multitasking. In addition, multitasking interfered with subjects’ ability to recognize audio information more than their ability to recognize visual information.

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