Representing dynamic stimulus information during occlusion

Abstract

Human observers maintain a representation of the visual features of objects when they become occluded. This representation facilitates the interpretation of occluded events and allows us to quickly identify objects upon reappearing. Here we investigated whether visual features that change over time are also represented during occlusion. To answer this question we used an illusion from the time perception domain in which the perceived duration of an event increases as its temporal frequency content increases. In the first experiment we demonstrate temporal frequency based modulation of duration both when the object remains visible as well as when it becomes temporarily occluded. Additionally, we demonstrate that this effect cannot be explained by modulations of duration as a result of pre- and post-occlusion presentation of the object. In a second experiment we corroborate this finding by demonstrating that modulations of the perceived duration of occluded events depend on the expected temporal frequency content of the object during occlusion. Together these results demonstrate that the dynamic properties of an object are represented during occlusion. We conclude that the representations of occluded objects contain a wide range of features derived from the period when the object was still visible, including information about both the static and dynamic properties of the object.