Oliva A, Schyns P G
Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, UK. aude,
Cogn Psychol. 1997 Oct;34(1):72-107. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1997.0667.
Efficient categorizations of complex visual stimuli require effective encodings of their distinctive properties. However, the question remains of how processes of object and scene categorization use the information associated with different perceptual spatial scales. The psychophysics of scale perception suggests that recognition uses coarse blobs before fine scale edges, because the former is perceptually available before the latter. Although possible, this perceptually determined scenario neglects the nature of the task the recognition system must solve. If different spatial scales transmit different information about the input, an identical scene might be flexibly encoded and perceived at the scale that optimizes information for the considered task-i.e., the diagnostic scale. This paper tests the hypothesis that scale diagnosticity can determine scale selection for recognition. Experiment 1 tested whether coarse and fine spatial scales were both available at the onset of scene categorization. The second experiment tested that the selection of one scale could change depending on the diagnostic information present at this scale. The third and fourth experiments investigated whether scale-specific cues were independently processed, or whether they perceptually cooperated in the recognition of the input scene. Results suggest that a mandatory low-level registration of multiple spatial scales promotes flexible scene encodings, perceptions, and categorizations.
对复杂视觉刺激进行有效的分类需要对其独特属性进行有效的编码。然而，物体和场景分类过程如何利用与不同感知空间尺度相关的信息这一问题仍然存在。尺度感知的心理物理学表明，识别在精细尺度边缘之前使用粗略的斑点，因为前者在感知上比后者更早可用。尽管有可能，但这种由感知决定的情况忽略了识别系统必须解决的任务的性质。如果不同的空间尺度传递关于输入的不同信息，那么相同的场景可能会在为所考虑的任务优化信息的尺度上——即诊断尺度——被灵活地编码和感知。本文检验了尺度诊断性可以决定识别的尺度选择这一假设。实验1测试了在场景分类开始时粗略和精细空间尺度是否都可用。第二个实验测试了一个尺度的选择是否会根据该尺度上存在的诊断信息而改变。第三和第四个实验研究了特定尺度线索是被独立处理，还是在输入场景的识别中在感知上相互协作。结果表明，多个空间尺度的强制性低层次登记促进了灵活的场景编码、感知和分类。
