Encoding of event roles from visual scenes is rapid, spontaneous, and interacts with higher-level visual processing

•We asked whether people spontaneously encode who acted on whom in visual scenes.•Participants performed simple tasks (e.g. color search) on a sequence of images.•Tasks required attention to visual features unrelated to event roles (e.g. color).•Response times were slower when the target actor’s rol...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2018-06, Vol.175, p.36-52
Main Authors: Hafri, Alon, Trueswell, John C., Strickland, Brent
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action perception
Argument structure
Boys
Cognitive ability
Cognitive science
Core cognition
Encoding
Event perception
Extraction
Gender differences
Information processing
Posture
Recognition
Scene perception
Semantics
Thematic roles
Visual processing
Visual task performance
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•We asked whether people spontaneously encode who acted on whom in visual scenes.•Participants performed simple tasks (e.g. color search) on a sequence of images.•Tasks required attention to visual features unrelated to event roles (e.g. color).•Response times were slower when the target actor’s role switched between trials.•The visual system rapidly and spontaneously encodes the structure of events. A crucial component of event recognition is understanding event roles, i.e. who acted on whom: boy hitting girl is different from girl hitting boy. We often categorize Agents (i.e. the actor) and Patients (i.e. the one acted upon) from visual input, but do we rapidly and spontaneously encode such roles even when our attention is otherwise occupied? In three experiments, participants observed a continuous sequence of two-person scenes and had to search for a target actor in each (the male/female or red/blue-shirted actor) by indicating with a button press whether the target appeared on the left or the right. Critically, although role was orthogonal to gender and shirt color, and was never explicitly mentioned, participants responded more slowly when the target’s role switched from trial to trial (e.g., the male went from being the Patient to the Agent). In a final experiment, we demonstrated that this effect cannot be fully explained by differences in posture associated with Agents and Patients. Our results suggest that extraction of event structure from visual scenes is rapid and spontaneous.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.02.011