List of Past Events

Visual statistical learning (VSL) illustrates the ability of the visual system to encode

subtle statistical regularities, without intent or awareness. Work on this topic was 

originally motivated by analogous research in language acquisition, and as a result 

VSL has remained relatively unconnected to the study of visual perception more generally.

Here we forge such connections, exploring the relationship between VSL and attention, 

feature binding, object persistence, and several other factors. We ask about when VSL

occurs, what triggers its onset and offset, what kinds of input it prefers, and what kinds

representations are constructed as a result of such learning. Collectively our results indicate

that VSL is highly constrained by other visual and cognitive processes that may not 

themselves be associative in nature. At the same time, these results illustrate the ways in

which VSL may be well adapted to real-world visual cognition. This serves as a case study

of how our visual systems are engaged in intricate types of processing of which we are

not typically aware.