Thinking for Seeing: Enculturation of Visual-Referential Expertise as Demonstrated by Photo-Triggered Perceptual Reorganization of Two-Tone “Mooney” Images

Thinking for Seeing: Enculturation of Visual-Referential Expertise as Demonstrated by Photo-Triggered Perceptual Reorganization of Two-Tone “Mooney” Images Jennifer M.D. Yoon (jennifer.yoon@stanford.edu) 1 Nathan Witthoft (witthoft@stanford.edu) 1 Jonathan Winawer (winawer@stanford.edu) 1 Michael C. Frank (mcfrank@stanford.edu) 1 Edward Gibson (egibson@mit.edu) 2 Ellen M. Markman (markman@stanford.edu) 1 Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139 Abstract was. This serves as a powerful demonstration of the ability of information outside the image to drive perceptual reorganization. Two-tones (”Mooney”-esque transformations of grayscale photographs) can be difficult to recognize. However, after viewing the photographs from which two-tones were created, adults experience rapid “perceptual reorganization,” and the two-tones become immediately recognizable. In contrast to the effortless post-cue recognition seen in adults, preschool- aged children are generally unable to recognize two-tone images even when the photograph is simultaneously available. While simple instructional and perceptual interventions were ineffective, a cognitive intervention in which children were convinced that the photo and two-tone images were transformations of the same physical object improved children’s recognition. We found a similar deficit in recognition in adults from a hunter-gatherer tribe (Piraha) with a sparse visual symbolic culture and limited exposure to modern visual media. Photo-triggered perceptual reorganization of two-tone images may therefore be a product of prolonged enculturation, reflecting visual-referential expertise. As we gain skill in representing visual correspondences, one of the surprising consequences may be the ability to literally see things we couldn’t see before. Figure 1. Dalmatian in the snow from Gregory, 2001. Keywords: vision; perception; recognition; development; culture; top-down effects; perceptual reorganization; expertise; referential and symbolic understanding. Introduction Object and scene recognition are typically rapid and automatic (Potter & Levy, 1969). When viewing impoverished images however, recognition may be difficult. One class of such images is two-tones. Two-tones are created by adjusting and thresholding photographs to render them in two values (pure black and pure white). Some of these images, similar to the famous “Dalmatian in the snow” (Gregory, 2001), can be difficult to interpret because the foreground objects are not easily segmented from the background scenes. When briefly viewed for the first time, a two-tone image may be perceived as a disorganized smattering of black and white patches. With the right cue, such as the photo from which the two-tone was derived, viewers find the image suddenly and vividly transformed into a coherent percept (Gregory, 2001). Moreover, following reorganization, it is difficult if not impossible to see the image as the meaningless array of patches it once Kovacs and Eisenberg (2004) showed 4-5 year old children two-tone images and their corresponding photos. None of the eight children were able to verbally identify the two-tone images, even with simultaneous presentation of the corresponding photo. This phenomenon is striking in that children appear to not just be slower or less accurate; rather, when viewing the two-tone images and photos side-by-side, they fail to see what adults see automatically. In our previous work, we replicated and extended the Kovacs & Eisenbergy (2004) finding in children. For our experiments we quantified performance with a measure of “drawing accuracy”: observers were asked to mark several corresponding features in the two-tone image and the matching photograph (Yoon, Winawer, Witthoft, & Markman, 2007). They received a maximum score of 1 if they were able to correctly mark corresponding parts in the two-tone and photo images, and a minimum score of 0 if no parts corresponded. Adults drawing accuracy was nearly perfect (Figure 4, Control 2), while children’s drawing accuracy was very low (Figure 4, Verbal report). The low marking scores were not due to an inability to understand the task or to relatively poor drawing skills. The same children had nearly perfect performance marking