Perceiving Persisting Objects

Visual experience consists of more than discrete snapshots of the world: we must bind individual views over time into a coherent dynamic experience. Not only must we perceive discrete objects, but we must see them as the *same* objects through time, motion, featural change, and interruptions such as occlusion. While a tremendous amount of research has explored static object representations, surprisingly little has focused on the factors which underlie the representation of persisting objects, beyond low-level motion mechanisms.

I will describe and demonstrate several new projects from our laboratory which explore three primary aspects of object persistence: (1) Surprising demonstrations of 'sustained inattentional blindness' and 'motion-induced blindness', highlighting the extent to which we can completely fail to be consciously aware of salient persisting objects in the first place; (2) Studies of visual tracking which begin to reveal the underlying 'rules' by which the visual system determines when objects do and do not persist; and (3) Studies of ambiguous motion displays which reveal the additional rules which help to determine 'which went where', in situations involving multiple moving objects. Each of these research strands will involve perceptually salient demonstrations of various types, with subject populations including adults, infants, and nonhuman primates. Collectively, this work begins to reveal how the mind weaves coherent persisting visual representations out of fragmented snapshots of the world.