Categorical perception of familiar objects

Fiona N. Newell, Heinrich H. Bülthoff

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    69 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We report three experiments where the categorical perception of familiar, three-dimensional objects was investigated. A continuum of shape change between 15 pairs of objects was created and the images along the continuum were used as stimuli. In Experiment 1 participants were first required to discriminate pairs of images of objects that lay along the shape continuum. Then participants were asked to classify each morph-image into one of two pre-specified classes. We found evidence for categorical perception in some but not all of our object pairs. In Experiment 2 we varied the viewpoint of the objects in the discrimination task and found that effects of categorical perception generalized across changes in view. In Experiment 3 similarity ratings for each object pair were collected. These similarity scores correlated with the degree of perceptual categorization found for the object pairs. Our findings suggest that some familiar objects are perceived categorically and that categorical perception is closely tied to inter-object perceptual similarity.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)113-143
    Number of pages31
    JournalCognition
    Volume85
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2002

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    We thank Isabelle Bülthoff for her help with SoftImage|3D, Melissa Peskin for help with running Experiment 2 and Nicole Köhnen for help in running Experiment 3. Thanks also go to Shimon Edelman for comments on our procedure. We are grateful to both Shimon Edelman and Guy Wallis for help with calculating the image distances between our object pairs. This research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Human Frontiers Science Programme and Trinity College Dublin Research Fund.

    Keywords

    • Categorical perception
    • Object recognition
    • Shape perception

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
    • Language and Linguistics
    • Developmental and Educational Psychology
    • Linguistics and Language
    • Cognitive Neuroscience

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