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Abstract:
To find out how the representations of structured visual
objects depend on the co-occurrence statistics of their
constituents, we exposed subjects to a set of composite images
with tight control exerted over (1) the conditional probabilities
of the constituent fragments, and (2) the value of Barlow's
criterion of ``suspicious coincidence'' (the ratio of joint
probability to the product of marginals). We then compared the
part verification response times for various probe/target
combinations before and after the exposure. For composite probes,
the speedup was much larger for targets that contained pairs of
fragments perfectly predictive of each other, compared to those
that did not. This effect was modulated by the significance of
their co-occurrence as estimated by Barlow's criterion. For
lone-fragment probes, the speedup in all conditions was generally
lower than for composites. These results shed light on the
brain's strategies for unsupervised acquisition of structural
information in vision.
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