Abstract
In the present work we were concerned with the role of sound representations in object recognition. In order to address this issue we made use of a picture naming task in which target pictures might be accompanied by a white-noise burst. White-noise was thought to interfere with the representation of the sound possibly associated with the depicted object. We reasoned that if such a representation is critical for the recognition of objects strongly associated with certain sounds, white-noise interference should affect the naming of pictures representing objects with typical sounds leaving the naming of object without typical sounds unaffected. The results were congruent with the predictions and consistent with a view of the semantic representations of objects as collection of related representations, modal in nature, and mandatorily accessed.
Highlights
This study deals with the role of sounds in object recognition in humans
We reasoned that if such a representation is critical for the recognition of objects strongly associated with certain sounds, white-noise interference should affect the naming of pictures representing objects with typical sounds leaving the naming of object without typical sounds unaffected
The analyses showed a significant main effect of Type of Object in the by-subjects analysis, F1(1, 31) = 6.8, MSE = 3640, Table 1 | Mean reaction times (RT s) and percentage of errors (E %) according to conditions
Summary
This study deals with the role of sounds in object recognition in humans. some objects are associated with a sound, i.e., some objects possess either a typical sound or category of sounds. Given that objects can be classified as a function of whether they possess or not a typical sound, a legitimate question is whether the typical sounds play any role in the visual recognition of the related objects. Upon the presentation of a visual object the system first accesses an abstract representation of that object and —depending on the task at hand—accesses the representations of information related to that object: among these representations is the representation of the typical sound. In this scenario, the access to the typical sound is post-categorical, in the sense that the object is first recognized as an instance of a particular kind (e.g., a “dog”) and the related information is retrieved (cf Allport, 1977; Mulatti et al, 2014). The typical sound may be activated but, since its retrieval follows the identification of the object, it does not play any role in the recognition of the object
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