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Paper   IPM / Cognitive%20Sciences / 7844
School of Cognitive Sciences
  Title:   Configural and analytical processing of familiar and unfamiliar objects
  Author(s): 
1.  B. Noudoost
2.  M. Adibi
3.  A. Moeeny
4.  H. Esteky
  Status:   Published
  Journal: COGNITIVE BRAIN RES
  Vol.:  24
  Year:  2005
  Pages:   436-441
  Supported by:  IPM
  Abstract:
Configural processing could develop for non-face visual objects as one becomes familiar with those objects through repeated exposure. To explore the role of familiarity in object recognition, we studied the effect of adaptation to a visual object (adapting stimulus) on the identification performance of other objects (test stimulus) while adapting and test stimuli were exactly the same, shared parts or were completely different. We used a subset of English alphabets (p, q, d and b) as familiar objects and an unfamiliar set of symbols constructed from same parts but with different configurations. Adaptation to a member of each set led to a lower identification performance for that object in a crowding paradigm. Adaptation to each member of the unfamiliar set resulted in decreased identification performance for the same object and those members of the set that shared parts with the adapting stimulus. But no such transfer of adaptation was observed for the familiar set. Our results support the notion that processing of object parts plays an important role in the recognition of unfamiliar objects while recognition of familiar objects is mainly based on configural processing mechanisms.


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