The Timing of Visual Object Categorization

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2011 Aug 4

PMID 21811480

Citations 29

Authors

Michael L Mack

Thomas J Palmeri

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

AN OBJECT CAN BE CATEGORIZED AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ABSTRACTION: as natural or man-made, animal or plant, bird or dog, or as a Northern Cardinal or Pyrrhuloxia. There has been growing interest in understanding how quickly categorizations at different levels are made and how the timing of those perceptual decisions changes with experience. We specifically contrast two perspectives on the timing of object categorization at different levels of abstraction. By one account, the relative timing implies a relative timing of stages of visual processing that are tied to particular levels of object categorization: Fast categorizations are fast because they precede other categorizations within the visual processing hierarchy. By another account, the relative timing reflects when perceptual features are available over time and the quality of perceptual evidence used to drive a perceptual decision process: Fast simply means fast, it does not mean first. Understanding the short-term and long-term temporal dynamics of object categorizations is key to developing computational models of visual object recognition. We briefly review a number of models of object categorization and outline how they explain the timing of visual object categorization at different levels of abstraction.

Citing Articles

The brain prioritizes the basic level of object category abstraction.

Greene M, Rohan A Sci Rep. 2025; 15(1):31.

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Recurrent connectivity supports higher-level visual and semantic object representations in the brain.

von Seth J, Nicholls V, Tyler L, Clarke A Commun Biol. 2023; 6(1):1207.

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A comparative study of the cognitive load of basic-level category, superordinate category and subordinate category.

Ji M, Luo C, Ren J, Yang Y Psychol Res. 2023; 87(7):2192-2203.

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Using High-Density Electroencephalography to Explore Spatiotemporal Representations of Object Categories in Visual Cortex.

Gurariy G, Mruczek R, Snow J, Caplovitz G J Cogn Neurosci. 2022; 34(6):967-987.

PMID: 35286384 PMC: 9169880. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01845.

Object Categorization Processing Differs According to Category Level: Comparing Visual Information Between the Basic and Superordinate Levels.

Taniguchi K, Kuraguchi K, Takano Y, Itakura S Front Psychol. 2020; 11:501.

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