Perceptual foundations of relational thinking

Classic models of visual perception pose that the ultimate goal of vision is object recognition.

Recentresearch suggests that visual perception is more sophisticated, representing the objects as well as therelations holding between them.

Relational representations are a major research focus in cognitivescience, as they play a central role in human reasoning, language and social life. Yet, how they comeabout in the human mind/brain remains largely unknown.

In ViSyRelPer, I study the role of the visualsystem in encoding relations, under the hypothesis that perception realizes the early stages of relationalrepresentation. I focus on two categories of relations: causal and social-interact.

First, I use frequency-tagging electroencephalography (FTEEG) to measure the automatic neural response of the visual systemto visual stimulation, and study whether: a) such response is evoked during observation of relationalevents (e.g. for causal relation: collision events) and b) generalizes to different instantiations of the samerelation (e.g. for causal relation: launching and pulling events).

Generalization would imply that the visualresponse reflects the representation of a relation, above and beyond the specific objects involved.Second, I use transcranial magnetic stimulation to interfere with activity in visuoperceptual brain areaswhile participants perform judgments on relational events.

This study proves a causal role of visual areasin relation processing, thus substantiating the hypothesis of relation perception.

Third, I use the aboveFTEEG approach to study perception of social and causal relations in individuals with autism spectrumdisorder.

I will investigate whether alterations in the visuoperceptual stages of relation representationcould be a marker of difficulties in the disorder, as raised in latest research.

This program will offer newavenues to discover the perceptual groundings of relational thinking underlying the complexity of human cognition.