Unconscious Inference — OECS
Unconscious inference refers to the rapid and unconscious, high-level choices made by the visual system to quickly organize input from the eyes into a coherent scene comprising objects, depth, light, and action. The core challenge for vision is that each pattern in an image may have many interpretations. Dark areas may be shadows, holes, dark hair, or clothes. Making sense of the visual input requires inferences—good guesses based on regularities in visual scenes and knowledge about objects and scene properties. Critically, for the visual world to make sense fast enough, these inferences need to operate within about one-tenth to one-third of a second, prior to any conscious awareness of what will be seen. Vision is able to accomplish this remarkable feat because it occupies an enormous chunk of the brain, as much as 30% of the human cortex. Hermann von Helmholtz (1924/2005) is often credited with the concept of unconscious inference, but Ibn al-Haytham (Sabra, 1989; for review Howard,