The role of recognizability in modulating scene consistency effect

How do object-scene relationships contribute to the recognition of objects and scenes? Findings related to this question are mixed, and the mediating factors remain unclear. The current study focused on the scene consistency effect and investigated the role of recognizability in modulating this effect. In Experiment 1 and 2, we presented foreground objects and background scenes in semantic consistent or inconsistent combinations; we also manipulated the recognizability of naming targets via using degraded and undegraded pictures. Participants were required to report the names of foreground objects (Exp. 1) or background scenes (Exp. 2) after viewing pictures for 80ms. The analysis of recognition accuracy revealed contextual consistency effects on both object and scene perception, and such effects were shown to vary as a function of recognizability, with a larger influence on less recognizable objects and scenes. In addition, the mediating effects of recognizability were larger for object recognition than for scene recognition. In Experiment 3, we examined object and scene naming alone without contextual information. The comparison with the other experiments showed that both object and scene recognition were interfered with by contextual inconsistency. Taken toghether, the findings suggest that objects and scenes are processed interactively and that such interaction is mediated by recognizability. In addition, the mediating role of recognizability varies for object and scene recognition, implying the distinct processing mechanisms underlying them.

Automated summary

This study examined the role of recognizability in modulating the scene consistency effect on object and scene recognition. The results showed that contextual consistency affected the recognition accuracy of both objects and scenes, with a stronger effect on less recognizable stimuli. The mediating role of recognizability was larger for object recognition than for scene recognition. Additionally, contextual inconsistency interfered with both object and scene recognition, as shown in the comparison with other experiments.