{"id":1541,"date":"2010-06-18T14:01:42","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T14:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2019-08-13T09:47:22","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T09:47:22","slug":"notes-about-minskys-frames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=1541","title":{"rendered":"Minsky&#8217;s frames"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"top\" \/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frames and stability<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>A Necker cube has 3 possible interpretations\/perceptions, two of which are 3D and one 2D. In the case of the 2D interpretation, one perceives a central arrangement of three squares that constitutes a \u201cfigure\u201d, and the surrounding tends to be perceived as irrelevant \u201cground\u201d. The layering in depth is here minimal. In the case of 3D interpretations, one perceives a junction as a 3D configuration in space, and the surrounding may or may not be in conflict with this interpretation. If it does, it seems to violate some local depth ordering, until the figure is re-interpreted, which suddenly leads to a different, stable frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The preference for 3D frames reveals a priority process. A potential explanation would be to consider the 2D interpretation to be more complex because the frame that corresponds to a figure-ground depth arrangement is far less likely to occur (i.e., less generic) than the depth arrangement induced by a 3D interpretation. 2D interpretations occur naturally only when no conventional depth arrangement in 3D is found, as in diagrams. However, it is possible to intentionally slide from a 3D frame to a 2D frame by selective attention, which may mean that unconscious attention processes may be the ones responsible for the priority given to 3D frames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Multi-stable stimuli are singularities of some sort of field: these are places where a slight push in a direction (an eye saccade, a word) might slide to another frame. The brain has evolved to avoid these singularities in most realistic cases and near-instantaneously settle in a stable frame. In the case of impossible figures, this settlement is never achieved: in other words, the frame is never complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frames and continuity<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Frame stability is necessary to be able to understand our direct environment. Completion may thus be a tendency to accept the least conflicting frame as long as possible, in order to reflect the coherence of real-world objects. Unusual completions revealed to an observer are thus likely to create <strong>surprises<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inbetweening (that occurs when one watches cartoons at low to mid framerates) could be thought to create stable frames in time: frames evolving progressively and only to reflect important changes in the environment. The non-regularity of event occurrence might be one reason for the importance of timing and spacing in traditional animation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In both cases (space and time), it suggests that frames could be a good basis for what is referred as mental imagery. A way to test the mechanisms involved in the construction of frames would be to create stimuli that try to violate assumptions in space or time, creating surprises. It would be even more convincing if the observers were surprised even if they know a trick is going on; in this case, it could be possible to postulate that frame update mechanisms occur near the boundary of consciousness\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frames and attention<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Once a frame is activated, it tricks attention toward a subset of focal points that tend to preserve the frame stability. This is best observed with weak frames that try but have only a weak influence in preventing attention from falling on alternative, stronger frames. Some frames are so stable that it takes a trained eye to break them: it requires directing one&#8217;s attention consciously to specific &#8220;disturbance&#8221; areas that would be otherwise ignored. Weakness and strongness might depend on the paths of eye saccades that lead to the same frame: the more such paths exist, the more stable a frame might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Surprise may occur if all guesses work fine, all evidence leads toward a (seemingly) unique answer, and yet something is wrong about it: one characteristic, when checked, is simply not valid. When this occurs, difficulty to revert to a stable frame seems to be a matter of attention: because of the path of thought that has been taken, the set of attentional foci might be reduced to a subset of potential points\/ideas of interest, and one might have to force himself into attending at novel ideas\/locations. Change blindness experiments show this difficulty vividly, and similar perceptual issues might sometimes occur in real life. At the other extreme, bi-stable stimuli are those peculiar cases where back-tracing is made easy: the attentional structures of both interpretations are so much intertwined that it is relatively easy to slide from one to the other. Most everyday situations revealing slidings of frames are inbetween these two extremes. A good example is that of a train that stays still next to another that departs: one might have the wrong perception of egomotion due to a motion cues, until attention is paid to static objects in the environment and a sudden slide to a static frame occurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Frames and psychogenesis<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Where do frames come from? Are they always there (i.e., purely objective), ready to be picked up by an observer? An alternative view is to consider that they are constructed by the observer (i.e., purely subjective), through a process called psychogenesis by Koenderink. It relates to the search image of von Uexk\u00fcll. For instance, an organism, performing a visual task, is actively searching for a specific shape in the environment; a frame might then be invoked on the fly and projected onto the environment, whatever visual cues become available being parsed through the prism of the frame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There might be large variations among organisms in the way psychogenesis unfolds: an adopted frame might resist more or less to incompatible cues, new frames might be more or less easily invoked by completely unrelated visual stimuli, the temporal coherence of a frame might persist for different periods of time, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This leaves the question of how frames, as units of psychogenesis, develop in an organism through time. The impact of visuo-motor loops is likely to be important:  a proto-frame might be built when a sufficiently persisting loop is discovered, then invoked, reinforced and complemented when a similar loop occurs. There should be innate aspects of frames (or of the way they are built), which permit to explain why we seem to have the same way of visually perceiving our environment; in addition to the environment (at the organism scale) being very similar for organisms of the same species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frames and stability A Necker cube has 3 possible interpretations\/perceptions, two of which are 3D and one 2D. In the case of the 2D interpretation, one perceives a central arrangement of three squares that constitutes a \u201cfigure\u201d, and the surrounding tends to be perceived as irrelevant \u201cground\u201d. The layering in depth is here minimal. In &#8230; <a title=\"Minsky&#8217;s frames\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/?p=1541\" aria-label=\"Read more about Minsky&#8217;s frames\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40073,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions\/40073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.labri.fr\/perso\/barla\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}