Tracking the time course of multidimensional stimulus discrimination: Analyses of viewing patterns and processing times during “same”-“different“ decisions

Abstract

We investigated the time course of conjunctive ''same''-''different'' judgements for visually presented object pairs by means of combined reaction time and on-line eye movement measurements. The analyses of viewing patterns, viewing times, and reaction times showed that participants engaged in a parallel self-terminating search for differences. In addition, the results obtained for objects differing in only one dimension suggest that processing times may depend on the relative codability of the stimulus dimensions. The results are reviewed in a broader framework in view of higher-order processes. We propose that overspecifications of colour, often found in object descriptions, may have an ''early'' visual rather than a ''late'' linguistic origin. In a parallel assessment of the detection materials, participants overspecified the objects' colour substantially more often than their size. We argue that referential overspecifications of colour are largely attributable to mechanisms of visual discrimination.Discriminating objects in the outside world is a fundamental process for many higher-order processes. Referring to an object in the framework of similar context objects is closely tied to the detection of discriminative features. However, the visual and linguistic processes involved in such a ''referential

Overspecification in written instruction

“…Brought to you by | Radboud University Nijmegen Authenticated Download Date | 3/3/15 2:47 PM Specific results in Table 1 are consistent with conclusions reported by Viethen and Dale (2008) and Belke and Meyer (2002). Viethen and Dale report on research that focuses on Natural Language Generation algorithm development.…”

“…They observed spatial overspecification in 231 (36.6%) of a total of 630 descriptions elicited in a web-based production experiment; participants mentioned location information although this was never necessary for the identification of the object. Belke and Meyer (2002) found in a naming experiment that color was overspecified substantially more often than size. Also, when participants had the choice of including either size or color to build a minimally specified expression, color was specified more often than size (68.1 percent, 128 utterances versus 9 percent, 17 utterances); the remaining utterances (22.9 percent, 43 utterances) were overspecified (both the size and the color were specified).…”

Overspecification facilitates object identification

“…Pechmann (1994) found that color was earlier available than size in a referential communication task. In production, Belke and Meyer (2002) and Belke (2006) found that overspecifications of color were more pervasive than overspecifications of size.…”

The Role of Graduality for Referring Expression Generation in Visual Scenes

“…Many algorithms [26,34] give priority to properties, not based on discriminatory power, but on how salient, relevant or preferred they are. This notion of preference is usually defined by appealing to psycholinguistic findings, for example, the finding that speakers tend to avoid prototypically gradable properties such as size, unless they are absolutely required, in contrast for example to colour which, as we have seen, is used very frequently [35,36]. However, many such findings are based on experimental domains in which colours are maximally salient and distinct.…”