Hysteresis in the Dynamic Perception of Scenes and Objects

Scenes and objects are effortlessly processed and integrated by the human visual system. Given the distinct neural and behavioral substrates of scene and object processing, it is likely that individuals sometimes preferentially rely on one process or the other when viewing canonical scene or object stimuli. This would allow the visual system to maximize the specific benefits of these 2 types of processing. It is less obvious which of these modes of perception would be invoked during naturalistic visual transition between a focused view of a single object and an expansive view of an entire scene, particularly at intermediate views that may not be assigned readily to either stimulus category. In the current study, we asked observers to report their online perception of such dynamic image sequences, which zoomed and panned between a canonical view of a single object and an entire scene. We found a large and consistent effect of prior perception, or hysteresis, on the classification of the sequence: observers classified the sequence as an object for several seconds longer if the trial started at the object view and zoomed out, whereas scenes were perceived for longer on trials beginning with a scene view. This hysteresis effect resisted several manipulations of the movie stimulus and of the task performed, but hinged on the perceptual history built by unidirectional progression through the image sequence. Multiple experiments confirmed that this hysteresis effect was not purely decisional and was more prominent for transitions between corresponding objects and scenes than between other high-level stimulus classes. This finding suggests that the competitive mechanisms underlying hysteresis may be especially prominent in the perception of objects and scenes. We propose that hysteresis aids in disambiguating perception during naturalistic visual transitions, which may facilitate a dynamic balance between scene and object processing to enhance processing efficiency.