What’s in an object file? Evidence from priming studies

Six experiments were conducted to investigate the nature of the contents of object files, temporary representations that store information about objects. Experiment 1 used a lexical priming paradigm with a lexical decision task, in which the prime and target could appear in either the same or different locations. The results indicated a greater priming effect when the prime and target appeared in the same location than when they appeared in different locations (object- or location-specific priming). Experiment 2 replicated these findings for objects that changed position during the display. Experiment 3 demonstrated that these findings reflected the inclusion of abstract identity information, rather than physical form, in object files. Three additional experiments tested for the presence of three types of semantic information (related concepts, semantic features, and category membership) in object files. No object-specific priming effects were found. Taken together, these experiments suggest that an object file includes identity information, but not semantic information. Implications of the results for object file theory are discussed.

[1]  D. Kahneman,et al.  The reviewing of object files: Object-specific integration of information , 1992, Cognitive Psychology.

[2]  R. Schvaneveldt,et al.  Facilitation in recognizing pairs of words: evidence of a dependence between retrieval operations. , 1971, Journal of experimental psychology.

[3]  G. Baylis.  Visual attention and objects: Two-object cost with equal convexity. , 1994 .

[4]  D. Balota,et al.  Depth of Automatic Spreading Activation: Mediated Priming Effects in Pronunciation but Not in Lexical Decision , 1986 .

[5]  J. Henderson,et al.  Two representational systems in dynamic visual identification. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[6]  Geoffrey Underwood,et al.  SEMANTIC INTERFERENCE FROM UNATTENDED PRINTED WORDS , 1976 .

[7]  R. Burchfield.  Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar. By W. Nelson Francis and Henry Kučera with the assistance of Andrew W. Mackie. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1982. x + 561 , 1985 .

[8]  A. Treisman,et al.  A feature-integration theory of attention , 1980, Cognitive Psychology.

[9]  M. Ross Quillian,et al.  Retrieval time from semantic memory , 1969 .

[10]  A. Treisman.  Features and Objects: The Fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture , 1988, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[11]  A. Pollatsek,et al.  Automatic access of semantic information by phonological codes in visual word recognition. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[12]  Z. Pylyshyn.  The role of location indexes in spatial perception: A sketch of the FINST spatial-index model , 1989, Cognition.

[13]  M D Anes,et al.  Roles of object-file review and type priming in visual identification within and across eye fixations. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[14]  J. Wolfe.  The Parallel Guidance of Visual Attention , 1992 .

[15]  W. Nelson Francis,et al.  FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH USAGE: LEXICON AND GRAMMAR , 1983 .

[16]  W. Whitten,et al.  Bidirectional synonym ratings of 464 noun pairs , 1979 .

[17]  A. Kramer,et al.  Perceptual organization and focused attention: The role of objects and proximity in visual processing , 1991, Perception & psychophysics.

[18]  J. Jenkins,et al.  Word association norms , 1964 .

[19]  W. Montague,et al.  Category norms of verbal items in 56 categories A replication and extension of the Connecticut category norms , 1969 .

[20]  A. Treisman.  Perceiving and re-perceiving objects. , 1992, The American psychologist.

[21]  I. Fischler.  Semantic facilitation without association in a lexical decision task , 1977, Memory & cognition.

[22]  G. Baylis,et al.  Visual attention and objects: evidence for hierarchical coding of location. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[23]  S. Lupker.  Semantic Priming without Association: A Second Look. , 1984 .

[24]  J. Sereno.  Graphemic, associative, and syntactic priming effects at a brief stimulus onset asynchrony in lexical decision and naming , 1991 .

[25]  J. Duncan.  Selective attention and the organization of visual information. , 1984, Journal of experimental psychology. General.