Visual Feature Integration of Three Attributes in Stimulus-Response Mapping Is Distinct From That of Two

Frontiers in Neuroscience

Masahiko Morita¹  Hiromi Morita²  Yumiko Fujii³  Mizuki Furutate⁴ 

[1] Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan;Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan;Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan;Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan;

关键词: feature integration;    binding problem;    stimulus-response mapping;    visual attention;    object representation;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnins.2019.00035

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In the human visual system, different attributes of an object are processed separately and are thought to be then temporarily bound by attention into an integrated representation to produce a specific response. However, if such representations existed in the brain for arbitrary multi-attribute objects, a combinatorial explosion problem would be unavoidable. Here, we show that attention may bind features of different attributes only in pairs and that bound feature pairs, rather than integrated object representations, are associated with responses for unfamiliar objects. We found that in a mapping task from three-attribute stimuli to responses, presenting three attributes in pairs (two attributes in each window) did not significantly complicate feature integration and response selection when the stimuli were not very familiar. We also found that repeated presentation of the same triple conjunctions significantly improved performance on the stimulus-response task when the correct responses were determined by the combination of three attributes, but this familiarity effect was not observed when the response could be determined by two attributes. These findings indicate that integration of three or more attributes is a distinct process from that of two, requiring long-term learning or some serial process. This suggests that integrated object representations are not formed or are formed only for a limited number of very familiar objects, which resolves the computational difficulty of the binding problem.

【 授权许可】

Unknown