Reindl Antónia, Schubert Torsten, Strobach Tilo, Becker Carola, Scholtz Gerhard
Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Cluster of Excellence "Image Knowledge Gestaltung - An Interdisciplinary Laboratory" Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 9;9:1905. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01905. eCollection 2018.
To recognize a familiar object, incoming perceptual information is matched against object representations in memory. Mounting evidence suggests that these representations are not stable, but adapt flexibly to recently encountered perceptual information. This is evident in the form of aftereffects, where prolonged exposure to one object (adaptor) influences perception of the next (test stimulus). So far, adaptation aftereffects have been mainly shown for human faces and simple geometric shapes, and it has been concluded that face aftereffects partially derive from shape adaptation. However, it is largely unknown whether adaptation aftereffects generalize to other categories of complex, naturalistic biological objects, and if so, whether these effects can be explained by shape adaptation. To answer these questions, we conducted three experiments in which images of crabs and lobsters were presented in two versions: as complex, naturalistic images, or reduced to their simplified geometric shapes. In Experiment 1, we found robust adaptation aftereffects for the complex versions of the images, indicating that adaptation aftereffects generalize to animate objects other than faces. Experiment 2 showed adaptation aftereffects for the simplified stimuli, replicating previous findings on geometric shapes. Experiment 3 demonstrated that adaptation to the simplified animal shapes results in aftereffects on the complex naturalistic stimuli. Comparisons between experiments revealed that aftereffects were largest in the first experiment, in which complex stimuli served as adaptor and test stimuli. Together, these experiments show that the magnitude of adaptation aftereffects depends on the complexity of the adaptor, but not on that of the test stimuli, and that shape adaptation plays a role in - but cannot entirely account for - the object aftereffects.
为了识别熟悉的物体，传入的感知信息会与记忆中的物体表征进行匹配。越来越多的证据表明，这些表征并不稳定，而是会灵活地适应最近遇到的感知信息。这在后效的形式中很明显，即长时间接触一个物体（适应刺激）会影响对下一个物体（测试刺激）的感知。到目前为止，适应后效主要在人脸和简单几何形状上得到了证明，并且已经得出结论，面部后效部分源于形状适应。然而，适应后效是否能推广到其他类别的复杂自然生物物体，以及如果可以，这些效应是否可以用形状适应来解释，在很大程度上仍然未知。为了回答这些问题，我们进行了三个实验，其中螃蟹和龙虾的图像以两种版本呈现：复杂的自然图像，或简化为其简化的几何形状。在实验1中，我们发现图像的复杂版本存在强烈的适应后效，表明适应后效可以推广到除人脸之外的有生命物体。实验2显示了简化刺激的适应后效，重复了之前关于几何形状的研究结果。实验3表明，对简化动物形状的适应会对复杂的自然刺激产生后效。实验之间的比较表明，后效在第一个实验中最大，其中复杂刺激用作适应刺激和测试刺激。总之，这些实验表明，适应后效的大小取决于适应刺激的复杂性，而不取决于测试刺激的复杂性，并且形状适应在物体后效中起作用，但不能完全解释物体后效。
