Alex.Holcombe@sydney.edu.auSchool of Psychology

@ceptional

Seeing Slow and Seeing Fast

http://www.slideshare.net/holcombea/

Adapted from: Tse, P. U., Intriligator, J., Rivest, J., & Cavanagh, P. (2004). Attention and the subjective expansion of time. Perception & Psychophysics, 66(7), 1171–1189.

53 x 8

?

Cognition

Perception

Holcombe, Kanwisher, & Treisman (2001)

When many impressions follow in excessively rapid succession in time, although we may be distinctly aware that they occupy some

duration, and are not simultaneous, we may be quite at a loss to tell which comes first and which last

!-William James (1890)

single-shot cycling

Subjective timeV  P  R  S  V  P  R  S  V  P

?

On a timeline, one event succeeds another. !

But that succession order may not be available / reportable.

Succession order not always available/reportable, so there are seemingly seamless transitions in experience but we can’t report what they are transitioning between. !

RESPONSE Fine, but consciousness at any one time is unified. !

E.g. when we perceive an object, and experience its color, and its motion, we should experience it as having a particular color and motion.

unified visual experience of motion and color

RESPONSE Fine, but consciousness at any one time is unified. !

E.g. when we perceive an object, and experience its color, and its motion, we should experience it as having a particular color and motion.

unified visual experience of motion and color

NO?Any two qualities should be experienced as simultaneous or not-simultaneous. !

Simultaneity experience unknown?

http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/research/colorMotionSimple/

Unified visual experience

Separate timelines?

color

motion

OR

Also: see auditory streaming

0amountof light

sensoryfilter

0

0lumsignal

centralfilter

NO SIGNAL

Stages of the system

flicker perceptionfirst-order motion perception

500 250 125 63 32 16duration of half cycle (ms)

1 2 4 8 16 32alternation rate, hertz (cycles per second)

form-color separated

& other arbitrary ♪ ♪

motion-color

500 250 125 63 32 16duration of half cycle (ms)

1 2 4 8 16 32alternation rate, hertz (cycles per second)

form-color separated

motion-colormotion-motion T

global form-colorhigher order motion

word recognitionacceleration, direction change

jump pink

instantaneous positionselection from R S V P

& other arbitrary ♪ ♪

flicker perceptionfirst-order motion perception

depth from binocular disparity

local elements ➞ global form

edges and texture boundaries

binding motion-motion non-T

color-orientation, common location

L eye: R eye:

1 targetobject tracking 2 targets

3 targets

Local analysis V1,V2

Non-local analysis V4, LOC

words

sele

ctio

n,

trac

king

Visual cognition

Massively parallel

Very low capacity

Movie1_threeFlickerPhaseLimits.mov

Above the slow limit

Above the flicker, motion, etc. limit

•Succession of experiences may not yield experience of succession

•Multiple timelines?, even for features of the same object (color and motion)

Holcombe, A.O. (2013). The temporal organisation of perception. In The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organisation. Wagemans, J., ed. Holcombe, A.O. (2009). Seeing slow and seeing fast: Two limits on human perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 13(5), 216-21.

Problems with timeline metaphor

Big brain, big visual system. Multiple timescales

https://vimeo.com/100287188