Visual perception of shape altered by inferred causal history

One of the main functions of vision is to represent object shape. Most theories of shape perception focus exclusively on geometrical computations (e.g., curvatures, symmetries, axis structure). Here, however, we find that shape representations are also profoundly influenced by an object’s causal origins: the processes in its past that formed it. Observers placed dots on objects to report their perceived symmetry axes. When objects appeared ‘complete’—created entirely by a single generative process—responses closely approximated the object’s geometrical axes. However, when objects appeared ‘bitten’—as if parts had been removed by a distinct causal process—the responses deviated significantly from the geometrical axes, as if the bitten regions were suppressed from the computation of symmetry. This suppression of bitten regions was also found when observers were not asked about symmetry axes but about the perceived front and back of objects. The findings suggest that visual shape representations are more sophisticated than previously appreciated. Objects are not only parsed according to what features they have, but also to how or why they have those features.