Perceptual and Cognitive Processes in Identification and Categorization

本研究将研究在两个或多个物理维度上变化的视觉刺激集的识别和分类中涉及的感知和认知过程。这项研究的动机是决策约束理论，该理论假设与每个物体或事件的重复呈现相关的感知信息存在可变性。该理论假设，从任何一种表现中获得的感知信息都可以用一组沿每个相关感知维度的坐标值来描述。当学习识别不熟悉的物体或事件或学习新的类别时，假设人类构建决策边界，将感知空间划分为区域。每个区域都与对象或事件名称或类别名称相关联。当遇到一个新物体时，人确定感知落在哪个区域，然后通过与该区域相关的名称识别或分类物体。这项研究将包括四个项目。第一项测试将沿着实验者定义的刺激维度测量视觉呈现刺激中可用信息的分布。第二个测试将测试视觉皮层中不同功能单元之间可能的相互作用。当纳入决策约束理论时，这两个项目的结果可能用于构建识别或分类视觉刺激的机器，以及人类。第三个项目将研究人类如何学习类别，通过关注如何学习类别边界的一些替代描述。最后的项目将研究人类做出分类判断所需的时间。特别是，该项目将试图阐明反应时间与刺激表征在感知空间中的定位之间的关系，特别是它与对比类别范例的关系。这些知识将增加我们对儿童如何学习阅读和命名环境中的物体的理解。

This research will study the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in the identification and categorization of sets of visual stimuli that vary on two or more physical dimensions. The research is motivated by decision-bound theory, which assumes there is variability in the perceptual information associated with repeated presentations of every object or event. The theory assumes that the perceptual information obtained from any one presentation can be described by a set of coordinate values along each of the relevant perceptual dimensions. When learning to identify unfamiliar objects or events or when learning new categories, humans are assumed to construct decision boundaries that partition the perceptual space into regions. Each region is associated with an object or event name or with the name of a category. When a new object is encountered, the person determines in which region the percept has fallen and then identifies or categorizes the object by the name associated with that region. This research will consist of four projects. The first will measure the distribution of information available in a visually- presented stimulus along the experimenter-defined stimulus dimensions. The second will test for possible interactions between different functional units in the visual cortex. When incorporated into decision-bound theory, the results of these two projects might be used to construct machines that identify or categorize visual stimuli as well as do humans. The third project will study how humans learn categories, by focusing on a number of alternative descriptions of how category boundaries are learned. The final project will study the time it takes humans to make categorization judgments. In particular, the project will try to elucidate the relation between response time and the positioning of the stimulus representation in perceptual space and, specifically, on its relation to the exemplars of contrasting categories. This knowledge will increase our understanding of how children learn to read and name objects in their environment.