Tunneling is a cognitive phenomenon where the brain perceives a persistent object even if it disappears behind an obstacle and reappears, relying on trajectory and speed to predict its reappearance. This plays an important role in visual processing of moving objects and is hard-wired in humans from a young age.
Tunneling is a perceptual phenomenon in which the brain will assume an object is persistent when it disappears past an occlusion and then reappears. For example, if a person sees a horse trotting behind a stable and a horse coming out the other side, he will assume it is the same horse, provided the animal’s trajectory makes sense. While this may seem obvious, it actually involves some complicated cognitive maneuvers and plays an important role in visual processing of moving objects.
Researchers studying tunneling note that if a subject sees a moving object and is occluded by an obstacle, the subject will predict where and when the object will reappear. The brain relies on the trajectory and speed of the object before it vanishes to calculate this information, although it tends to underestimate the travel time through the “tunnel”, the time it is invisible due to the occlusion.
Through the tunneling effect, the brain will perceive a persistent object moving in the same space and time, even if it disappears and reappears. Without this perceptual phenomenon, if something disappeared behind another object and reappeared, the brain might think it was a different object. Cognitively, the brain may be puzzled about what happened to the first object, and also unsure of the origins of the “new” object. A version of this can be seen in peek-a-boo play with very young children, who are still developing cognition and perception and may not initially understand what happens when a parent manipulates an object in and out of sight.
Tunneling can also involve a moving occlusion and a stationary object. A person standing on a street corner, for example, might notice a newsstand on the opposite corner. When a car passes and occludes the newsstand, the brain assumes it will reappear after the car passes and that it will be the newsstand itself. Interestingly, in studies of how tunneling works, researchers have shown that tricks like changing the object’s color or size don’t fool the brain, and it still reads the object as persistent, rather than thinking it is new.
Human perception is complex. Some perceptual phenomena are hard-wired and begin manifesting at a very young age, while others develop during the infant stage and begin to mature. Providing children with a rich environment is essential to facilitate cognitive development. Without stimulation, babies will lose the ability to develop important connections in their brains and may never catch up.
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