Authors
Bria Long, Talia Konkle, Michael A Cohen, George A Alvarez
Publication date
2016/1
Journal
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume
145
Issue
1
Pages
95-109
Publisher
American Psychological Association
Description
Understanding how perceptual and conceptual representations are connected is a fundamental goal of cognitive science. Here, we focus on a broad conceptual distinction that constrains how we interact with objects—real-world size. Although there appear to be clear perceptual correlates for basic-level categories (apples look like other apples, oranges look like other oranges), the perceptual correlates of broader categorical distinctions are largely unexplored, ie, do small objects look like other small objects? Because there are many kinds of small objects (eg, cups, keys), there may be no reliable perceptual features that distinguish them from big objects (eg, cars, tables). Contrary to this intuition, we demonstrated that big and small objects have reliable perceptual differences that can be extracted by early stages of visual processing. In a series of visual search studies, participants found target objects faster when …
Scholar articles
B Long, T Konkle, MA Cohen, GA Alvarez - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2016