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Related Experiment Videos

Tracking multiple items through occlusion: clues to visual objecthood.

B J Scholl1, Z W Pylyshyn

  • 1Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020, USA.

Cognitive Psychology
|March 26, 1999
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Subjects can track multiple objects even when they are occluded, as long as accretion and deletion cues are present. This suggests visual attention accounts for occlusion in object perception.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Visual Perception
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Understanding objecthood is crucial for visual attention.
  • Previous research has explored how visual systems maintain object identity during occlusion.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how occlusion affects the ability to track multiple objects.
  • To determine the specific visual cues necessary for maintaining object perception during occlusion.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted where participants tracked multiple independently moving items.
  • Items were occluded briefly and unpredictably, with varying occlusion cues.

Main Results:

  • Performance was unimpaired when items were occluded with accretion/deletion cues along fixed contours.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Performance degraded when items disappeared and reappeared without these cues, even with similar visual field presence.
  • Visible occluders or globally consistent occluder positions were not required for unimpaired tracking.

    • Conclusions:

    • Visual attention incorporates occlusion into objecthood computations.
    • Accretion and deletion cues along fixed contours are critical for maintaining object perception during occlusion.
    • These findings inform theories of objecthood within visual attention models.