Stimulus duration and diversity do not reverse the advantage for superordinate-level representations: the animal is seen before the bird

Basic-level categorization has long been thought to be the entry level for object representations. However, this view is now challenged. In particular, Mace etal. [M.J.-M. Mace etal. (2009) PLoS One, 4, e5927] showed that basic-level categorization (such as bird') requires a longer processing time than superordinate-level categorization (such as animal'). It has been argued that this result depends on the brief stimulus presentation times used in their study, which would degrade the visual information available. Here, we used a go/no-go paradigm to test whether the superordinate-level advantage could be observed with longer stimulus durations, and also investigated the impact of manipulating the target and distractor set heterogeneity. Our results clearly show that presentation time had no effect on categorization performance. Both target and distractor diversity influenced performance, but basic-level categories were never accessed faster or with higher accuracy than superordinate-level categories. These results argue in favor of coarse to fine visual processing to access perceptual representations.