Anaki David, Bentin Shlomo
Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.
Cognition. 2009 Apr;111(1):144-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.002. Epub 2009 Feb 12.
It is well established that faces, in contrast to objects, are categorized as fast or faster at the individual level (e.g., Bill Clinton) than at the basic-level (e.g., human face). This subordinate-shift from basic-level categorization has been considered an outcome of visual expertise with processing faces. However, in the present study we found that, similar to familiar faces, categorization of individually-known familiar towers is also faster at the individual level than at the basic-level in naïve participants. In addition, category-verification of familiar stimuli, at basic and superordinate levels, was slower and less accurate compared to unfamiliar stimuli. Thus, the existence of detailed semantic information, regardless of expertise, can induce a shift in the default level of object categorization from basic to individual level. Moreover, the individually-specific knowledge is not only more easily-retrieved from memory but it might also interfere with accessing more general category information.
与物体相比，人们早已确定，面孔在个体层面（例如比尔·克林顿）的分类速度比在基本层面（例如人脸）更快。这种从基本层面分类的下属转移被认为是处理面孔的视觉专业知识的结果。然而，在本研究中，我们发现，与熟悉的面孔类似，在没有经验的参与者中，对个体熟知的熟悉塔楼的分类在个体层面也比在基本层面更快。此外，与不熟悉的刺激相比，熟悉刺激在基本和上级层面的类别验证更慢且准确性更低。因此，无论专业知识如何，详细语义信息的存在都可以导致物体分类的默认水平从基本层面转移到个体层面。此外，个体特定的知识不仅更容易从记忆中检索出来，而且还可能干扰获取更一般的类别信息。
