4.2 Article

The role of category- and exemplar-specific experience in ensemble processing of objects

Journal

ATTENTION PERCEPTION & PSYCHOPHYSICS
Volume 83, Issue 3, Pages 1080-1093

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-020-02162-4

Keywords

Ensemble perception; Object recognition; Diversity judgment; Experience; Expertise

Funding

  1. Centennial research fund at Vanderbilt University
  2. David K. Wilson Chair research fund at Vanderbilt University
  3. National Science Foundation [BCS-1840896]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

People can more accurately judge the diversity within object arrays with experience, especially for common objects and objects of expertise like faces. However, not all specific exemplar practice results in better diversity judgments for object categories.
People can relatively easily report summary properties for ensembles of objects, suggesting that this information can enrich visual experience and increase the efficiency of perceptual processing. Here, we ask whether the ability to judge diversity within object arrays improves with experience. We surmised that ensemble judgments would be more accurate for commonly experienced objects, and perhaps even more for objects of expertise like faces. We also expected improvements in ensemble processing with practice with a novel category, and perhaps even more with repeated experience with specific exemplars. We compared the effect of experience on diversity judgments for arrays of objects, with participants being tested with either a small number of repeated exemplars or with a large number of exemplars from the same object category. To explore the role of more prolonged experience, we tested participants with completely novel objects (random blobs), with objects familiar at the category level (cars), and with objects with which observers are experts at subordinate-level recognition (faces). For objects that are novel, participants showed evidence of improved ability to distribute attention. In contrast, for object categories with long-term experience, i.e., faces and cars, performance improved during the experiment but not necessarily due to improved ensemble processing. Practice with specific exemplars did not result in better diversity judgments for all object categories. Considered together, these results suggest that ensemble processing improves with experience. However, experience operates rapidly, the role of experience does not rely on exemplar-level knowledge and may not benefit from subordinate-level expertise.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.2
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available