Multiple object tracking with extended occlusions
: Lukavsky J, Oksama L, Dechterenko F
Publisher: SAGE journals LTD
: 2022
: Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
: QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
: Q J EXP PSYCHOL
: 13
: 1747-0218
: 1747-0226
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221142463(external)
: https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218221142463(external)
In everyday life, we often view objects through a limited aperture (e.g., soccer players on TV or cars slipping into our blind spot on a busy road), where objects often move out of view and reappear in a different place later. We modelled this situation in a series of multiple object tracking (MOT) experiments, in which we introduced a cover on the edges of the observed area and manipulated its width. This method introduced systematic occlusions, which were longer than those used in previous MOT studies. Experiment 1 (N = 50) showed that tracking under such conditions is possible, although difficult. An item-level analysis confirmed that people made more errors in targets that were covered longer and more often. In Experiment 2 (N = 50), we manipulated the tracking workload and found that the participants were less affected by the cover when the tracking load was low. In Experiment 3 (N = 50), we asked the participants to keep track of the objects' identities (multiple identity tracking [MIT]). Although MIT is subjectively more demanding, memorising identities improved performance in the most difficult cover conditions. Contrary to previous reports, we also found that even partial occlusions negatively affected tracking.