Perception: Object recognition

Pattern recognition

Definition – identification or categorisation of 2D patterns

Most of the research in this area concentrates in recognition of letters and numbers. For
example, how do you recognise a T, different orientations, different fonts, different sizes.
Most theories often assume that we process specific features first and then go on to process
more global features.

Scenes:

People are very fast at recognising scenes like cities or motorways because of the large
number of objects and because of occlusion. Scenes have very specific spatial organisation.

Gestalt laws of perceptual organisation:

- Difficult to say which visual information belongs together and forms objects because
the environment is very complex and very confusing as objects overlap and hide
parts of objects.
1. The law or proximity – Visual elements close in space tend to be grouped together
2. The law of similarity – We group together the things that are similar
3. The law of good continuation – We group things together if they appear to form a
continuous pattern
4. The law of closure – We tend to complete figures with gaps in them by ignoring the
gaps and mentally filling in what we believe should be there

Gestalt Psychology:

- How we experience things that are not part of our perceptions. The mind adds
structure to the things we see.
- The notion that the simplest possible organisation of the visual environment is
perceived.

Figure ground segregation:

- Perceptual organisation of the visual field (objects of central interest) into a figure
and ground (less important background)
- Figure is perceived as being in front of the ground

Gestalt approach evaluation:

Advantages: Describes perceptual organisation well, many principles have stood the test of
the time (applied to 3D images), Law of Pragnanz has proven useful.
Limitations: Underestimated the importance of knowledge, more descriptive than
explanatory, less applicable to detailed images, many further discoveries have been made,
too inflexible.

The Gestalt legacy:

Simple perceptual principles to create meaning to our world, relevance to marketing and
art, film industry, useful tools of psychologists to study the mind

David Marr’s theory:

- One of the most influential scientists

- He developed a computational model to understand object recognition.
- People construct a series of representations which give them more and more
information about their visual environment

3 stages of the Marr’s theory

1. Primal sketch – 2D description of light-intensity changes, includes information about

edges, contours, and blobs, observer-centred
2. 2,5D sketch – incorporated depth and orientation of surfaces. Uses the information
from shading, texture, motion, binocular disparity etc., observer-centred and
viewpoint-dependant.
3. 3D model representation – 3D object’s shapes and their relative positions, it is
independent of the observer (viewpoint independent/invariant).

He proposed that object recognition was much more complex than previously thought.

Limitations – Maybe too much emphasis on bottom-up processes. He did admit that top-
down processes played a role. However, he ignored the role of expectations and prior
knowledge in visual perception.

Irving Biederman’s recognition-by-components theory:

- Extended Marr’s theory

- Core of his theory is that ALL objects can be reduced to a set of simple components
- Objects consist of combinations of geons
• Geometric icons
• 36 basic shapes

If there’s enough information available to enable us to identify and object’s basic geons, we
will be able to identify objects.

Advantages – Good evidence for geons being important in object recognition. Provides
answer to how we identify objects even when there us substantial differences (shape, size,
orientation) between members of the same category, evidence that concavities and edges
are important in object recognition, many principles have stood the test of time
Limitations – de-emphasises importance of top-down influences from context, expectations
and previous knowledge, flails to account for most within-category discrimination, much
recognition is actually viewpoint dependend, Some classes do not have invariant geons yet
are still recognisable as members of a category (e.g., clouds)