Is object recognition automatic?

Abstract

A new paradigm is proposed that involves a simple judgment on an object's perceptual feature that is independent of object identity. Subjects were required to categorize as vertical or horizontal the main axis of elongation of an object picture. Both fake and real-world objects were presented, and a graphical manipulation was applied to their shapes so that the canonical elongation ofthe real-world objects was incongruent with the elongation of their shapes after the manipulation. The results showed an influence of the identity of the objects on the perceptual task in the form of a cost in judging the elongation of the incongruent real-world objects. The results are taken as evidence for automatic activation of objects' stored representations. A "horse-race" model of the influence of these representations on the perceptual task is proposed in the final section of the article.One interesting question concerning the ability to identify an object is whether such a mental skill can be regarded as automatic-namely, whether identification cannot be prevented from running to completion once an object is presented within the visual field. Three different kinds of psychological effects usually have been taken to reflect the automaticity of object identification.The first effect is the so-called negative priming effect. Tipper (1985) presented subjects with two superimposed pictures of objects (prime display) and asked them to selectively attend to only one ofthe two stimuli (target) and to ignore the other (distractor). A third picture (probe) was presented following the prime display, and subjects were required to name the probe. Probes and distractors could be identical, semantically related, or unrelated. Results showed that naming responses were slower when probes and distractors were either identical or semantically related than when they were unrelated. Negative priming effects have also been observed in studies in which the symbolic domain of the stimuli was varied-that is, when written words were presented as probes, and pictures as distractors (Tipper & Driver, 1988).The second effect is the semantic priming effect. In a

Semantic Crosstalk in Timbre Perception

“…In H1, interference is expected to be observed when instrument names and sounds disagree. This premise is analogous to cross-modal studies using naturalistic sounds and images/names (e.g., seeing an elephant but hearing a sheep): authors report that congruent matches facilitate classification (Chen & Spence, 2010, 2011; Yuval-Greenberg & Deouell, 2009), with quick and effortless sound-source elisions (Dell’acqua & Job, 1998; Glaser & Glaser, 1989). This result would suggest a failure of selective attention as participants struggle to reconcile competing semantic and sonic frames.…”

Recognizing a plane-misoriented view of a familiar object is not influenced by the ease of specifying the main axis of elongation of that object

“…Dell'Acqua and colleagues (Dell'Acqua & Job, 1998;Dell'Acqua, Job, & Grainger, 2001) tested whether object identity influenced performance in a horizontal or vertical axis? task that did not require objects to be identified.…”

Semantic interference from objects both in and out of a scene context.

“…Boucart and colleagues concluded that objects mandatorily activate their semantic representations if the global shape was attended. Dell'Acqua and Job (1998) similarly found evidence for automatic activation of an object's meaning when they had participants categorize the main axis of elongation of objects as vertical or horizontal. Objects that were elongated in a dimension opposite to their typical perspective were judged more slowly than were nonobjects.…”