Abstract
“No man ever steps in the same river twice.” This ancient puzzle by Heraclitus may inspire us to consider that at each moment our retina presents us with a brand new and never before experienced visual scene. That is, the visual world is constantly changing. But what if change itself became a visual feature? Traditionally, a method for identifying and tracking individuals over time has been the object specific preview benefit (OSPB). In this phenomenon a feature (eg. a letter) is briefly presented on two separate objects, then the objects are put in motion, and after the motion has ended the feature is presented again on the objects; the effect consists of faster retrieval of the information if it is presented on the same object. Franconeri et al showed that in an ambiguous scene, where spatio-temporal continuity is disrupted, features of objects (such as color) could serve as a basis for reidentification and could also elicit an OSPB. We replicated Franconeri et al 2009 and showed that two disks of different colors could produce an OSPB. Next, we tested whether an abstract feature, a continuously changing item, could also generate an OSPB. In a series of experiments, we kept the feature of one disk a certain color, but the color of the other disk was continuously changing. With this modification, we obtained significant OSPBs. That is, higher order features, such as the continuous change of a feature, can be represented by visual cognition, and can be put to use to solve the correspondence problem.