The Influence of Visual Features on Scene Perception and Cognition

Humans are especially good at creating meaning from a chaotic visual world. My work is an exploration of how the physical world is processed by the brain, and how that processing influences and informs human cognition. Chapter 2 examines the receptive field properties of scene-selective cortex, revealing that the parahippocampal place area is able to represent various visual features related to scene content. Chapter 3 then explores how a subset of visual features (i.e., length, curvature, and orientation) automatically cue valence and threat information. The particular arrangement of contours within a scene allow for rapid gist perception, in turn influencing whether one will approach or avoid a particular environment. Chapters 4 and 5 pertain to the active scene exploration that occurs once the gist of a scene has been processed and an approach decision has been made. Specifically, Chapter 4 explores how low-level, mid-level, and high-level features, are involved in both bottom-up and top-down attentional guidance, while Chapter 5 explores how active visual exploration is linked to memory for real-world scenes. This entire process relies on the visual features present in the physical world which are interpreted as meaningful units by the brain. This thesis reveals how several of these features are involved in scene perception as it relates to emotion, attention, and memory.Ph.D