[The contextual effect in object detection from picture].
Participants detected a target from search stimuli which contained either eight (Experiment 1) or four (Experiment 2) living or nonliving common objects. Objects were represented either as pictures or as words. The target and other stimuli were from a same category, either living or nonliving, in the congruent condition, and were from a different category in the incongruent condition. The results of Experiment 1 showed that picture targets were detected more quickly in the incongruent than in the congruent condition while word targets were detected more quickly in the congruent than in the incongruent condition. These results indicate an interference effect of visual context in picture detection and a facilitation effect of semantic context in word detection. However, Experiment 2 using four stimuli did not show the same contextual effects as Experiment 1, probably because the task became easy.
Matsukawa
Junko
J
Department of Human Studies, Faculty of Letters, Kanazawa University, Kakuma-cho, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan. matsukaw@kenroku.kanazawa-u.ac.jp
D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics