Abstract:

Demonstrations of perceptual organization processes like grouping, surface completion, figure-ground assignment, and correspondence across time and space, are fascinating not just because of their compelling phenomenology, but because they provide insight into different levels of representation and their functions within the visual cognitive system more generally. I will present research that has focused on some of the functional consequences of perceptual organization in visual processing as it unfolds over time. I will suggest that an implication of this work is that perceptual organization processes serve to establish transitory representations that dynamically reflect a perceived object structure that guides how newly sampled visual information is integrated into existing representations of the external world. This function of perceptual organization, it will be argued, is a critical determinant of what we experience and what we miss.

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