Abstract
A previous study by the author found that discrimination latencies for figure pairs with the same topological structure (isomorphic pairs) were longer than for pairs with different topological structures (nonisomorphic pairs). These results suggest that topological sensitivity occurs during figure recognition. However, sameness was judged in terms of both shape and orientation. Using this criterion, faster discrimination of nonisomorphic pairs may have arisen from the detection of differences in the corresponding locations of the paired figures, which is not a topological property. The current study examined whether topological sensitivity occurs even when identity judgments are based on the sameness of shapes, irrespective of their orientation, where the sameness of location is not ensured. The current results suggested the involvement of topological sensitivity, indicating that processing of structural properties (invariant features) of a figure may be prioritized over processing of superficial features, such as location, length, and angles, in figure recognition.
Highlights
How do humans recognize disoriented figures? some researchers have emphasized the importance of unanalytical normalization and matching processes such as mental rotation in figure recognition (Cooper, 1975; Cooper & Podgorny, 1976; Shepard & Metzler, 1971), others have suggested that the detection of orientation-independent or coordinate system-independent properties precedes normalization processes (Corballis, 1988; Corballis, Zbrodoff, Schetzer, & Butler, 1978; Eley, 1982; Takano, 1989; Treisman & Gelade, 1980)
That shorter latencies were obtained for Noniso pairs compared with Iso pairs indicates that topological differences between the figures in a pair facilitate their discriminability
This supports the presence of topological sensitivity
Summary
How do humans recognize disoriented figures? some researchers have emphasized the importance of unanalytical normalization and matching processes such as mental rotation in figure recognition (Cooper, 1975; Cooper & Podgorny, 1976; Shepard & Metzler, 1971), others have suggested that the detection of orientation-independent or coordinate system-independent properties precedes normalization processes (Corballis, 1988; Corballis, Zbrodoff, Schetzer, & Butler, 1978; Eley, 1982; Takano, 1989; Treisman & Gelade, 1980). Faster discrimination of Noniso pairs compared with Iso pairs may have arisen from faster detection of a difference in the locational correspondence of invariant features, rather than faster detection of differences in invariant feature values per se (Figure 3) To clarify this issue, the present study was conducted to examine whether topological sensitivity would persist in a task in which disoriented and dislocated but identically shaped pairs were defined as identical. Concerning differences in line length, Kanbe (2013) reported that differences in the total line lengths of pairs of figures (a superficial feature) could be confounded with topologically different pair types (i.e., simulations produced average line length differences that were smaller for Iso pairs than for Noniso pairs) Taking such potential confounds into account, only pairs of figures without intersections and the same total line lengths were used in the current study
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