The tree in the bathroom: the role of the incongruous in understanding the gist of a scene

• Applicant: Dr. Preeti Sareen
• Subject Area: Cognitive, Systems and Behavioural Neurobiology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2012 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 222158212

We can categorize a real world scene in a single glance (bedroom, field, etc). An initial representation of a scene is formed before the deployment of attention and individual object identification. This scene “gist” is based on global information, integrated across the entire scene. However, natural scenes may contain incongruent objects in them that could contradict the gist (‘chimeric’ scenes). For example, a scene whose gist might be ‘living room’ would contain congruent objects like sofas, chairs, and carpet. A chimeric scene might contain incongruent objects like trees and a lake, seen through a window. Incongruent information could delay or disrupt the rapid calculation of scene gist. Alternatively, this global process may be sophisticated enough to discount incongruent information or even to support two gists (living room & forest lake in our example). My research will test the hypothesis that human gist processing is robust against incongruity and will examine the limits of that robustness. This work will elucidate basic building blocks of human scene perception; a fundamental component of everyday vision and a requirement for many specialized tasks from driving vehicles to medical diagnosis.

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