Abstract Shape Representation in Human Visual Perception
Abstract Shape Representation in Human Visual Perception
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DOI：
10.1037/xge0000409
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发表时间：
2018-09-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Kellman, Philip J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Baker, Nicholas;Kellman, Philip J.
从视觉输入中形成形状表征的能力对感知、思考和行动至关重要。感知到的形状是抽象的，当我们只能看到由离散点指定的轮廓时，当一朵云看起来像一条鱼时，或者当我们通过尺度和方向的转换来匹配形状时，就证明了这一点。令人惊讶的是，我们对生物视觉中抽象形状表征的形成知之甚少。我们报告了在视觉感知中存在抽象形状表征的实验，并确定了它们形成的时间过程。在实验1中，我们在需要抽象形状的任务中改变刺激暴露时间，发现它在刺激开始后约100 ms出现。结果还表明，抽象形状表示在某些变换中是不变的，并且可以从空间分离的点中恢复。实验2发现，点位置等基本视觉特征的编码发生在刺激开始后的前30 ms，这表明形状表征需要的处理时间超过提取空间特征所需的处理时间。实验3采用收敛方法确定抽象形状表征的时间和重要性。只要有足够的时间，形状表征就会自动地、强制性地形成，即使在指令和准确反应都不涉及形状的任务中，也会影响表现。这些结果为抽象形状表征在视觉感知中的存在、出现和功能重要性提供了证据。我们将这些结果与“深度学习”系统以及否认抽象表征在人类感知和认知中的重要性的建议进行了对比。
The ability to form shape representations from visual input is crucial to perception, thought, and action. Perceived shape is abstract, as evidenced when we can see a contour specified only by discrete dots, when a cloud appears to resemble a fish, or when we match shapes across transformations of scale and orientation. Surprisingly little is known about the formation of abstract shape representations in biological vision. We report experiments that demonstrate the existence of abstract shape representations in visual perception and identify the time course of their formation. In Experiment 1, we varied stimulus exposure time in a task that required abstract shape and found that it emerges about 100 ms after stimulus onset. The results also showed that abstract shape representations are invariant across certain transformations and that they can be recovered from spatially separated dots. Experiment 2 found that encoding of basic visual features, such as dot locations, occurs during the first 30 ms after stimulus onset, indicating that shape representations require processing time beyond that needed to extract spatial features. Experiment 3 used a convergent method to confirm the timing and importance of abstract shape representations. Given sufficient time, shape representations form automatically and obligatorily, affecting performance even in a task in which neither instructions nor accurate responding involved shape. These results provide evidence for the existence, emergence, and functional importance of abstract shape representations in visual perception. We contrast these results with "deep learning" systems and with proposals that deny the importance of abstract representations in human perception and cognition.