How to Create Objects With Your Mind: From Object-Based Attention to Attention-Based Objects

When staring at a blank grid, one can readily “see” simple shapes—a peculiar experience that does not occur when viewing an empty background. But just what does this “seeing” entail? Previous work has explored many cues to object-based attention (e.g., involving continuity and closure), but here we asked whether attention can be object based even when there are no cues to objecthood. Observers viewed simple grids and attended to particular...