title: Object imagery and object identification: object imagers are better at identifying spatially-filtered visual objects.
abstract: Object imagery refers to the ability to construct pictorial images of objects. Individuals with high object imagery (high-OI) produce more vivid mental images than individuals with low object imagery (low-OI), and they encode and process both mental images and visual stimuli in a more global and holistic way. In the present study, we investigated whether and how level of object imagery may affect the way in which individuals identify visual objects. High-OI and low-OI participants were asked to perform a visual identification task with spatially-filtered pictures of real objects. Each picture was presented at nine levels of filtering, starting from the most blurred (level 1: only low spatial frequencies--global configuration) and gradually adding high spatial frequencies up to the complete version (level 9: global configuration plus local and internal details). Our data showed that high-OI participants identified stimuli at a lower level of filtering than participants with low-OI, indicating that they were better able than low-OI participants to identify visual objects at lower spatial frequencies. Implications of the results and future developments are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Via S. Niccolò 93, 50125 Florence, Italy. manila.vannucci@psico.unifi.it
authors.forename: Manila
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vannucci
authors.forename: Giuliana
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mazzoni
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chiorri
authors.forename: Lavinia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cioli
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*