The current study is the first step in an overall research program designed to examine the visual perception of attributes of novel objects in different contexts that may be supported differentially by the ventral and dorsal processing streams. It is known that the ventral visual stream supports object identification whereas the dorsal stream allows for visually guided actions. In the full investigations, we will assess whether object attributes interact or are processed independently across contexts we believe will differentially recruit one or both of the visual streams. These contexts start with a static identification scenario suspected to tap into ventral stream processes. Follow-up studies are selected to increasingly rely on perception-action pathways as stimulus presentation modalities change (e.g., using movies and then physical objects). In this initial work, we present the findings from a standard object identification task using 2D images of novel objects generated by a 3D object modeling program. We apply tests derived from a theory of perception, termed General Recognition Theory (GRT), and find that in this static identification task, object attributes generally are perceived separably. Marginal response invariance (a test derived from GRT to show perceptual separability) was held for six observers and one observer was inconclusive. Overall, these findings are consistent with perceptual separability of appendage sharpness and center concavity. Three observers’ data were consistent with report independence, and four observers were inconsistent or inconclusive. Overall, we cannot conclude whether the noise on the corresponding noise channels for the two dimensions are correlated or uncorrelated.
Author(s): Mark Rick, Allan Collins, and Robin D. Thomas, Ph.D.
Advisor(s): Robin D. Thomas, Ph.D., Psychology Department
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