Imagine being able to place your fingers on things in the
world without being able to detect their properties in this
way, but being able to refer to those things so you could
move your gaze or attention to them. If you could you
would possess FINgers of INSTantiation (FINSTs)!
Review of FINSTs and MOT
• FINSTs as the mechansm by which the early vision
module individuates, selects, refers to, and keeps
track of individual things in a scene without using
any encoding (or conceptualization) of their
properties
• MOT (and several other experimental paradigms)
as demonstrations of FINSTs in action
• FINSTs are the visual system’s analogue of
individuation and demonstractive reference that
works without the apparatus of concepts
FINST Theory postulates a small number of pointer
mechanisms in early vision that are elicited by causal
events in the visual field and that enable vision to refer to
things without doing so under concept or description
The assumption is that we have a way to directly pick
out individual distal elements as sensory individuals –
not as bearers of certain known properties
Examples where such indexes are needed:
 Incremental construction of visual representations – the
correspondence problem over time (geometry example)
 Encoding relational predicates; e.g., Collinear (x,y,z,..);
Closed (C); Inside (x, C); Above (x,y); Square (w,x,y,z),
requires simultaneously binding the arguments of
n-place predicates to n elements in the visual scene
 Evaluating such visual predicates requires individuating
and referencing the objects over which the predicate is
evaluated: i.e., the arguments in the predicate must be
bound to individual objects in the scene.
Multiple Object Tracking Demos
Keep track of the objects that flash
It even works if objects are allowed to self occlude
Examples of additional findings with MOT
MOT with occlusion
MOT with virtual occluders
MOT with matched nonoccluding disappearance
Track endpoints of lines
Track rubber-band linked boxes
Track and remember ID by location
Track and remember ID by name (number)
Track while everything briefly disappears (½ sec) and goes
on moving while invisible
Track while everything briefy disappears and reappears
where they were when they disappeared
Demo of Object File Experiment
Object-Specific Priming Benefit
Demo of Object File Experiment