The short-term persistence of perceptual organization.

The human brain reconstructs the visual world into a perceptual organization, based on the input it receives from the eyes. But what happens when this input becomes temporarily occluded, for instance by an eye blink? In theory the process of reconstruction could start over again, from scratch, when the original input re-appears. However this would be very inefficient. Here, we will investigate how long a previously achieved perceptual organization can persist across such brief interruptions. At the same time, we believe that this persistence relies on more general mechanisms of visual processing, that are also at work when the visual input remains continuously present. The theoretical implications of the current study are therefore not limited to the situation where the input is interrupted. We will then apply the knowledge gained from these studies to a common situation, namely eye movements. When the gaze shifts, the projection of a scene at the back of the eye is rapidly displaced. We will investigate whether perceptual organization persists across this gap in a similar manner as across other gaps, and also why human observers experience the world to be stable even though the input of the eyes to the brain is not.

Keywords:Transsaccadic perception, Eye movements, Visual perception, Psychophy, Perceptual grouping, Visual memory

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences