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Knox K, Pratt J, Cant JS. Examining the role of action-driven attention in ensemble processing. J Vis 2024; 24:5. [PMID: 38842835 PMCID: PMC11160948 DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.6.5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2023] [Accepted: 04/21/2024] [Indexed: 06/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Ensemble processing allows the visual system to condense visual information into useful summary statistics (e.g., average size), thereby overcoming capacity limitations to visual working memory and attention. To examine the role of attention in ensemble processing, we conducted three experiments using a novel paradigm that merged the action effect (a manipulation of attention) and ensemble processing. Participants were instructed to make a simple action if the feature of a cue word corresponded to a subsequent shape. Immediately after, they were shown an ensemble display of eight ovals of varying sizes and were asked to report either the average size of all ovals or the size of a single oval from the set. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were cued with a task-relevant feature, and in Experiment 3, participants were cued with a task-irrelevant feature. Overall, the task-relevant cues that elicited an action influenced reports of average size in the ensemble phase more than the cues that were passively viewed, whereas task-irrelevant cues did not bias the reports of average size. The results of this study suggest that attention influences ensemble processing only when it is directed toward a task-relevant feature.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina Knox
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, Canada
| | - Jay Pratt
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
| | - Jonathan S Cant
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, Canada
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Sama MA, Nestor A, Cant JS. The Neural Dynamics of Face Ensemble and Central Face Processing. J Neurosci 2024; 44:e1027232023. [PMID: 38148151 PMCID: PMC10869155 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.1027-23.2023] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2023] [Revised: 11/21/2023] [Accepted: 12/11/2023] [Indexed: 12/28/2023] Open
Abstract
Extensive work has investigated the neural processing of single faces, including the role of shape and surface properties. However, much less is known about the neural basis of face ensemble perception (e.g., simultaneously viewing several faces in a crowd). Importantly, the contribution of shape and surface properties have not been elucidated in face ensemble processing. Furthermore, how single central faces are processed within the context of an ensemble remains unclear. Here, we probe the neural dynamics of ensemble representation using pattern analyses as applied to electrophysiology data in healthy adults (seven males, nine females). Our investigation relies on a unique set of stimuli, depicting different facial identities, which vary parametrically and independently along their shape and surface properties. These stimuli were organized into ensemble displays consisting of six surround faces arranged in a circle around one central face. Overall, our results indicate that both shape and surface properties play a significant role in face ensemble encoding, with the latter demonstrating a more pronounced contribution. Importantly, we find that the neural processing of the center face precedes that of the surround faces in an ensemble. Further, the temporal profile of center face decoding is similar to that of single faces, while those of single faces and face ensembles diverge extensively from each other. Thus, our work capitalizes on a new center-surround paradigm to elucidate the neural dynamics of ensemble processing and the information that underpins it. Critically, our results serve to bridge the study of single and ensemble face perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marco Agazio Sama
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada
| | - Adrian Nestor
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada
| | - Jonathan Samuel Cant
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada
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Robinson MM, Brady TF. A quantitative model of ensemble perception as summed activation in feature space. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1638-1651. [PMID: 37402880 PMCID: PMC10810262 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01602-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2022] [Accepted: 04/14/2023] [Indexed: 07/06/2023]
Abstract
Ensemble perception is a process by which we summarize complex scenes. Despite the importance of ensemble perception to everyday cognition, there are few computational models that provide a formal account of this process. Here we develop and test a model in which ensemble representations reflect the global sum of activation signals across all individual items. We leverage this set of minimal assumptions to formally connect a model of memory for individual items to ensembles. We compare our ensemble model against a set of alternative models in five experiments. Our approach uses performance on a visual memory task for individual items to generate zero-free-parameter predictions of interindividual and intraindividual differences in performance on an ensemble continuous-report task. Our top-down modelling approach formally unifies models of memory for individual items and ensembles and opens a venue for building and comparing models of distinct memory processes and representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria M Robinson
- Psychology Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
| | - Timothy F Brady
- Psychology Department, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
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Karim AKMR, Proulx MJ, de Sousa AA, Likova LT. Do we enjoy what we sense and perceive? A dissociation between aesthetic appreciation and basic perception of environmental objects or events. COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE 2022; 22:904-951. [PMID: 35589909 PMCID: PMC10159614 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-022-01004-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 03/27/2022] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.
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Affiliation(s)
- A K M Rezaul Karim
- Department of Psychology, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh.
- Envision Research Institute, 610 N. Main St., Wichita, KS, USA.
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA.
| | | | | | - Lora T Likova
- The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, USA
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No effect of spatial attention on the processing of a motion ensemble: Evidence from Posner cueing. Atten Percept Psychophys 2021; 84:1845-1857. [PMID: 34811633 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-021-02392-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 10/07/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
The formation of ensemble codes is an efficient means through which the visual system represents vast arrays of information. This has led to the claim that ensemble representations are formed with minimal reliance on attentional resources. However, evidence is mixed regarding the effects of attention on ensemble processing, and researchers do not always make it clear how attention is being manipulated by their paradigm of choice. In this study, we examined the effects of Posner cueing - a well-established method of manipulating spatial attention - on the processing of a global motion stimulus, a naturalistic ensemble that requires the pooling of local motion signals. In Experiment 1, using a centrally presented, predictive attentional cue, we found no effect of spatial attention on global motion performance: Accuracy in invalid trials, where attention was misdirected by the cue, did not differ from accuracy in valid trials, where attention was directed to the location of the motion stimulus. In Experiment 2, we maximized the potential for our paradigm to reveal any attentional effects on global motion processing by using a threshold-based measure of performance; however, despite this change, there was again no evidence of an attentional effect on performance. Together, our results show that the processing of a global motion stimulus is unaffected when spatial attention is misdirected, and speak to the efficiency with which such ensemble stimuli are processed.
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Fan AWY, Guo LL, Frost A, Whitwell RL, Niemeier M, Cant JS. Grasping of Real-World Objects Is Not Biased by Ensemble Perception. Front Psychol 2021; 12:597691. [PMID: 33912099 PMCID: PMC8071954 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.597691] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Accepted: 03/15/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The visual system is known to extract summary representations of visually similar objects which bias the perception of individual objects toward the ensemble average. Although vision plays a large role in guiding action, less is known about whether ensemble representation is informative for action. Motor behavior is tuned to the veridical dimensions of objects and generally considered resistant to perceptual biases. However, when the relevant grasp dimension is not available or is unconstrained, ensemble perception may be informative to behavior by providing gist information about surrounding objects. In the present study, we examined if summary representations of a surrounding ensemble display influenced grip aperture and orientation when participants reached-to-grasp a central circular target which had an explicit size but importantly no explicit orientation that the visuomotor system could selectively attend to. Maximum grip aperture and grip orientation were not biased by ensemble statistics during grasping, although participants were able to perceive and provide manual estimations of the average size and orientation of the ensemble display. Support vector machine classification of ensemble statistics achieved above-chance classification accuracy when trained on kinematic and electromyography data of the perceptual but not grasping conditions, supporting our univariate findings. These results suggest that even along unconstrained grasping dimensions, visually-guided behaviors toward real-world objects are not biased by ensemble processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annabel Wing-Yan Fan
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Lin Lawrence Guo
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Adam Frost
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Robert L. Whitwell
- The Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Matthias Niemeier
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Jonathan S. Cant
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
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