The Processing of Semantics and Syntax in Naturalistic Scene Viewing

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Melissa Le-Hoa Vo
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2009 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 159914243

When we look around, the world does not appear to us as a random aggregation of isolated objects. Rather, the arrangement of objects in naturalistic scenes conforms to certain rules. The aim of this proposal is to gain further insight into how we use prior experience and expectations regarding object-scene relationships to efficiently guide our attention when viewing naturalistic scenes. We want to provide the grounds for a theoretical framework, according to which objects in scenes — similar to words within sentences — are processed in both a semantic (i.e., content related) and a syntactic (i.e., structure related) manner. By selectively violating expectations regarding a scene's semantic or syntactic composition, we will be able to investigate the effects of object-scene inconsistencies on attention allocation as well as their temporal dynamics by measuring behavioral performance, eye movements, and event-related potentials. A greater knowledge of what mechanisms are involved in the effective control of attention in real-world scenes will contribute to several core cognitive science disciplines such as cognitive psychology, visual neuroscience, or machine vision.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Jeremy M. Wolfe