Dr Erin Goddard (UNSW)

Visual feature binding and colour constancy: similar processes?

Abstract

Different regions in visual cortex show specialisation for encoding different visual features, giving rise the question of how these features are ‘bound together’ to create a unitary percept of each object. I will show recent work based on classification of magnetoencephalography (MEG) data where we found that information about separate colour and shape information preceded information about their conjunction in occipital cortex. This may reflect feedback to occipital regions being required for feature binding, which would be consistent with a role for attention, as suggested by behavioural work (e.g. visual search). While this ‘binding problem’ has been investigated for at least 30 years, more recently I investigated whether a process similar to feature binding might be involved in the separation of surface and illuminant properties in colour constancy. I will present behavioural work where we tested this idea, and found that, like feature binding, the perceptual separation of surface and illuminant properties appears to rely on a slower, limited capacity process.

Bio

Erin Goddard is currently a Scientia Lecturer at UNSW, Sydney. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, including honours in physiology (rather than psychology, which meant that for years afterwards Sally Andrews greeted her as ‘the girl who made the wrong decision!’), then a PhD in the School of Psychology, completed in 2011. After postdocs in Sydney and at McGill University, Canada, she moved to UNSW in 2020. Her research focusses on visual perception, with a focus on colour vision. She uses a combination of behavioural and neuroimaging (fMRI, MEG, EEG) methods in her research.