The Activation of Scene Gist: Global Versus Local Features

Abstract

The present study investigates how human observers understand real-world scenes. Past studies have shown that individuals infer the meaning or gist of a real-world scene within a single glance. The current study examined how much visual information is needed in order to elicit an understanding of a visual scene. Sixty participants were shown a brief presentation of a scene and the amount of scene information shown was manipulated across six experimental conditions, varying from only details at the centre (local features) to the full scene (global features). Local features are objects present in a scene, or can also be visual features such as textures, colours and other surface properties important for understanding a visual scene. Global features ecompass the actual space of the scene, including the geometry, spatial layout, and scene structure. Based on past research, we anticipate scene understanding will occur where global features are available, but not in conditions where only local features are available. However, preliminary results revealed that participants understood the gist of the scene even when minimal features were available to them. This study aims to further current research on scene understanding and the visual features required to comprehend complex visual information in our environment.