Visual crowding illustrates the inadequacy of local vs. global and feedforward vs. feedback distinctions in modeling visual perception
Author
Clarke, Aaron
Herzog, M.
Francis, G.
Date
2014Source Title
Frontiers in Psychology
Print ISSN
1664-1078
Publisher
Frontiers
Volume
5
Pages
1193
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
56
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37
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Abstract
Experimentaliststendtoclassifymodelsofvisualperceptionasbeingeitherlocalorglobal,andinvolvingeitherfeedforwardorfeedbackprocessing.Wearguethatthesedistinctionsarenotashelpfulastheymightappear,andweillustratetheseissuesbyanalyzingmodelsofvisualcrowdingasanexample.Recentstudieshavearguedthatcrowdingcannotbeexplainedbypurelylocalprocessing,butthatinstead,globalfactorssuchasperceptualgroupingarecrucial.Theoriesofperceptualgrouping,inturn,ofteninvokefeedbackconnectionsasawaytoaccountfortheirglobalproperties.Weexaminedthreetypesofcrowdingmodelsthatarerepresentativeofglobalprocessingmodels,andtwoofwhichemployfeedbackprocessing:amodelbasedonFourierfiltering,afeedbackneuralnetwork,andaspecificfeedbackneuralarchitecturethatexplicitlymodelsperceptualgrouping.Simulationsdemonstratethatcrucialempiricalfindingsarenotaccountedforbyanyofthemodels.Weconcludethatempiricalinvestigationsthatrejectalocalorfeedforwardarchitectureofferalmostnoconstraintsformodelconstruction,asthereareanuncountablenumberofglobalandfeedbacksystems.Weproposethattheidentificationofasystemasbeinglocalorglobalandfeedforwardorfeedbackislessimportantthantheidentificationofasystem’scomputationaldetails.Onlythelatterinformationcanprovideconstraintsonmodeldevelopmentandpromotequantitativeexplanationsofcomplexphenomena.