The current volume, a special issue of Visual Cognition, brings together an eclectic group of investigators, all of whom study critical issues in the perception of true real-world scenes. Topics include the rapid acquisition of scene gist; scene recognition; spatial layout and spatial scale; distance perception in scenes; updating of scene views over time; visual search for meaningful objects in scenes; scene context effects on object perception; scene representation in memory; the allocation of attention including eye fixations during scene viewing; and the neural implementation of these representations and processes in the brain. Because the study of real-world scene perception benefits from an interdisciplinary approach, contributors to the volume use a variety of research methods including psychophysical and behavioral techniques, eyetracking, functional neuroimaging (including fMRI and ERP), and mathematical and computational modeling. While much has been learned from studying simplified visual stimuli, many of the articles in this volume make the important point that understanding the functional and neural architectures of the visual system requires studying how that system operates when faced with the types of real-world stimuli that evolution crafted it to handle.
Table of Contents:
J.M. Henderson, Introduction to Real-World Scene Perception. G.A. Rousselet, O.R. Joubert, M. Fabre-Thorpe, How Long to get to the "Gist" of Real-world Natural Scenes? V. Goffaux, C. J.A. Mouraux, A. Oliva, P.G. Schyns, B. Rossion, Diagnostic Colors Contribute to the Early Stages of Scene Categorization: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Evidence. L. F.ei-Fei, R. VanRullen, C. Koch, P. Perona, Why does Natural Scene Categorization Require Little Attention? Exploring Attentional Requirements for Natural and Synthetic Stimulilus. E. Özgen, P.T. Sowden, P.G. Schyns, C. Daoutis, Top-down Attentional Modulation of Spatial Frequency Processing in Scene Perception. M. McCotter, F. Gosselin, P. Sowden, P. Schyns, The Use of Visual Information in Natural Scenes. R.A. Epstein, The Cortical Basis of Visual Scene Processing. D.A. Gajewski, J.M. Henderson,Minimal Use of Working Memory in a Scene Comparison Task. A. Hollingworth , Memory for Object Position in Natural Scenes. M.S. Castelhano, J.M. Henderson, Incidental Visual Memory for Objects in Scenes. M.P. Munger, T. Ryan Owens, J.E. Conway, Are Boundary Extension and Representational Momentum Related? L.C. Loschky, G.W. McConkie, J. Yang, M.E. Miller, The Limits of Visual Resolution in Natural Scene Viewing. L. Itti, Quantifying the Contribution of Low-level Saliency to Human Eye Movements in Dynamic Scenes. E. Walter, P. Dassonville, Semantic Guidance of Attention within Natural Scenes. S. Forti, G.W. Humphreys, D.G. Watson, Eye Movements in Search in Visual Neglect. F.H. Hamker, A Computational Model of Visual Stability and Change Detection During Eye Movements in Real World Scenes. G.L. Dueker, A. Needham, Infants' Object Category Formation and Use: Real-world Context Effects on Category Use in Object Processing. B.C. Hansen, E.A. Essock, Influence of Scale and Orientation on the Visual Perception of Natural Scenes. R. Ni, M.L. Braunstein, G.J. Andersen, Distance Perception from Motion Parallax and Ground Contact.
