Attentional selection of levels within hierarchically organized figures is mediated by object-files.

ABSTRACT: Objects frequently have a hierarchical organization (tree-branch-leaf). How do we select the level to be attended? This has been explored with compound letters: a global letter built from local letters. One explanation, backed by much empirical support, is that attentional competition is biased toward certain spatial frequency (SF) bands across all locations and objects (a SF filter). This view assumes that the global and local letters are carried respectively by low and high SF bands, and that the bias can persist over time. Here we advocate a complementary view in which perception of hierarchical level is determined by how we represent letters in object-files. Although many properties bound to an object-file (i.e., position, color, even shape) can mutate without affecting its persistence

SUBMITTER: Valdes-Sosa MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4267176 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature