Date of Award
Spring 6-2-2022
Document Type
Thesis (Undergraduate)
Department or Program
Cognitive Science
First Advisor
Jonathan Phillips
Second Advisor
Viola Störmer
Abstract
How do cognitive and perceptual load affect the way we experience the world when the visual scene is incomplete or partially occluded? The present study seeks to answer this question with a series of experiments based on primed matching, amodal completion, and load theory. In Experiment 1, we replicated results that amodal completion is automatic and supports multiple possible completions. In Experiment 2, we found that working memory load decreases the priming effects of both partially occluded and fully visible shapes. In Experiment 3, we found that perceptual load decreases the priming effect of partially occluded shapes more so than that of unoccluded shapes. In general, perceptual load differentially interferes with amodal completion. We conclude that amodal completion of multiple possibilities occurs serially and that these completions are most differently represented early on in the perceptual processing stream from those of unoccluded shapes.
Recommended Citation
Parker, Camden, "How Do We Represent Possibilities in the Visual World? — An analysis of amodal completion under cognitive and perceptual load." (2022). Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses. 267.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/senior_theses/267
