Consistency effects between objects in scenes

How does context influence the perception of objects in scenes? Objects appear in a given setting with surrounding objects. Do objects in scenes exert contextual influences on each other? Do these influences interact with background consistency? In three experiments, we investigated the role of object-to-object context on object and scene perception. Objects (Experiments I and 3) and backgrounds (Experiment 2) were reported more accurately when the objects and their settings were consistent than when they were inconsistent, regardless of the number of foreground objects. In Experiment 3, related objects (from the same setting) were reported more accurately than were unrelated objects (from different settings), independently of consistency with the background. Consistent with an interactive model of scene processing, both object-to-object context and object-background context affect object perception.