Past research suggests that recognizing scene gist, a viewer's holistic semantic representation of acquired within single eye fixation, involves purely feed-forward mechanisms. We investigated whether expectations can influence categorization. To do this, we embedded target scenes in more ecologically valid, first-person-viewpoint image sequences, along spatiotemporally connected routes (e.g., an office to parking lot). manipulated the sequences' spatiotemporal coherence by presenting them...

Abstract How does viewers’ knowledge guide their attention while they watch everyday events, how it affect memory, and change with age? Older adults have diminished episodic memory for but intact semantic knowledge. Indeed, research suggests that older may rely on to offset impairments in when relevant is lacking, adults’ can suffer. Yet, the mechanism by which prior guides attentional selection watching dynamic activity unclear. To address this, we studied influence of events young tracking...

People spontaneously segment continuous ongoing actions into sequences of events. Prior research found that gaze similarity and pupil dilation increase at event boundaries older adults more idiosyncratically than do young adults. We used eye tracking to explore age-related differences in (i.e., the extent which individuals look same places time as others) boundaries. Older watched naturalistic videos actors performing everyday activities while we tracked their movements. Afterward, they...

Your understanding of what you see now surely influences will look at next. Yet this simple concept has only recently begun to be systematically studied and elaborated within theoretical frameworks. The Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) distinguishes between front-end back-end processes that occur while viewers perceive comprehend dynamic real-world events. Front-end during each eye fixation (information extraction, attentional selection) in memory (the current...

Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) posits that understanding picture stories depends upon a coordination of two processes: (1) integrating new information into the current event model is coherent with it (i.e., mapping) (2) segmenting experiences distinct models shifting). In experiments, we investigated competing hypotheses regarding how viewers coordinate mapping process bridging inference generation shifting segmentation by manipulating presence/absence Bridging...

We segment what we read into meaningful events, each separated by a discrete boundary. How does event segmentation during encoding relate to the structure of story information in long-term memory? To evaluate this question, participants stories fictional historical events and then engaged post-reading verb arrangement task. In task, saw verbs from placed randomly on computer screen, they arranged groups onscreen based their understanding story. Participants who successfully comprehended same...

Spatial memory is important for supporting the successful completion of everyday activities and a particularly vulnerable domain in late life. Grouping items together memory, or chunking, can improve spatial performance. In desktop scale spaces well-learned large-scale environments, error patterns suggest that information chunked memory. However, chunking mechanisms involved learning new large-scale, navigable environments are poorly understood. five experiments, two which included young...

People spontaneously segment an observed everyday activity into discrete, meaningful events, but segmentation can be modified by task goals. Asking young adults to attend event while watching movies of actions improved their memory up 1 month later (Flores et al., 2017). Does attending improve across the lifespan? Participants between ages 20 and 79 watched actors performing activities intentionally encoding them for a recall recognition test week (Experiment 1) or 2) later. In addition...

What role do scene category expectations play in gist recognition? Research has shown viewers accurately identify the of briefly flashed scenes presented randomized sequences suggesting it involves purely feed-forward mechanisms. We investigated if sequential for could influence their recognition. created spatial narrative images linked along spatio-temporal routes from starting points to destinations (e.g., office, hallway, stairwell, sidewalk, parking lot). 10 each were an RSVP sequence,...

Observers can categorize a novel scene within the first 100 ms of its onset. Researchers have suggested this is accomplished through rapid feed-forward sweep neural activation. Consequently, researchers focused on examining minimal perceptual information diagnostic scene's semantic category, rather than investigating role that top-down processes play in categorization. Thus, most gist studies present scenes from multiple categories randomized sequences.Conversely, experiment, we tested...

Past research has argued that scene gist, a holistic semantic representation of acquired within single fixation, is extracted using purely feed-forward mechanisms. As such, gist recognition studies have presented scenes from multiple categories in randomized sequences. We tested whether rapid categorization could be facilitated by priming sequential expectations. created more ecologically valid, first-person viewpoint, image sequences, along spatiotemporally connected routes (e.g., an office...

How do the limits of peripheral vision versus effects attentional selection influence change blindness? We investigated this in four Experiments. first characterizing difficulty numerous blindness demonstrations using standard Flicker paradigm Experiment 1. 2 evaluated viewers’ ability to peripherally discriminate pairs varying when changes were fully attended. showed participants a change. Participants then fixated predetermined locations, 1.25-10 degrees eccentricity from each change, and...

What guides eye movements while viewing visual narratives? More specifically, do comprehension processes influence attentional selection when reading wordless picture stories? According to the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) there are front-end processes, such as selection, that occur during single fixations, and back-end building an event model, in working memory long-term memory. Here we have investigated how may be influenced by models people view narratives. Prior...

Rapid scene categorization is typically argued to be purely feed-forward. Yet, when navigating in our environment, we usually see predictable sequences of categories (e.g., offices followed by hallways, parking lots sidewalks, etc.). Previous work showed that scenes were both easier recognize, and discriminate from phase-randomized noise, shown ecologically valid, than randomized (Smith & Loschky, 2019). But, processing do sequential predictions facilitate categorization? We examined this...