Visual Object Recognition

Abstract

Humans have the remarkable ability to encode and remember thousands of familiar objects in great detail, and yet the psychological and neural mechanisms that contribute to this facility remain elusive. This review considers the recent progress made on this topic, with consideration given to the data gleaned from a host of relevant methodologies. The results of psychophysical and neuroimaging investigations are considered alongside findings that examine object recognition in individuals with deficits in this domain. We also consider the emergence of object recognition skills through behavioral and imaging studies with children. Theoretical accounts and new techniques, including representational (dis)similarity analysis and deep convolution networks, are also considered. As is often the case in such reviews, more questions are raised than answers provided, and the comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms giving rise to visual object recognition remains an alluring challenge to cognitive science.

Differentiation of Types of Visual Agnosia Using EEG

“…Visual agnosia is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by severe difficulties in the recognition of common, everyday objects, and is not due to impairments in early sensory vision, memory or language function (for a review, see [1,2]). Visual agnosia (‘agnosia’ for short hereafter) is a highly heterogenous disorder that results from damage to a premorbidly normal region or regions of the cortical visual system, and is often referred to as ‘acquired’ visual agnosia.…”

Is a Pink Cow Still a Cow? Individual Differences in Toddlers' Vocabulary Knowledge and Lexical Representations

“…Furthermore, regularities across domains lead them to acquire general word‐learning biases, like the shape bias: the tendency to prioritize shape when generalizing novel names to novel objects (e.g., Landau, Smith, & Jones, ). Because shape is critical to membership in many object categories (Samuelson & Smith, ), being able to represent an object using only a sparse shape caricature is important for visual object recognition (Biederman, ). This skill, which develops around 18–24 months, has previously been linked to language development (Borgström, von Torkildsen, & Lindgren, ; Pereira & Smith, ; Smith, ) and the acquisition of the shape bias (Yee, Jones, & Smith, ).…”