The Role Of Gestalt Principle In The Creation Of Object File

During the past two decades, the operations of "object" in various cognitive processing have been extensively investigated. However, the principles by which the representation of object is created are still unclear. In the current study, with the object reviewing paradigm, we investigated whether or not the object-specific previewing benefit (OSPB) are based on the same kind of object representation as the object-based selective attention and working memory. The results showed that:(1) OSPB is not influenced by the type of linking stimuli's boundary (physical, subject or no boundary), indicating that closed boundary is not a key factor in creating an object file.(2) There is significant OSPB when the preview stimuli and linking stimuli are perceived, according to the Gestalt principles, as figure and background rather than integrated objects.(3) OSPB still exists when the preview stimuli and linking stimuli can not be processed as integrated object by selective attention and working memory.These results indicated that OSPB is not based on the same object representation as the object-based attention and working memory. It is suggested that in addition to the "Gestalt object" which is created by organizing visual features (color, shape, size, etc) according to the Gestalt principles, there is also a "spatial-temporal object" within which multiple "Gestalt object" sharing the same spatial-temporal properties can be integrated. Whereas selective attention is deployed to the "Gestalt object", OSPB is based upon the "spatial-temporal" object.