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Abstract

At ECVP 2001 (2001 Perception 30 Supplement, 22) we reported that some motion cues were as relevant to object categorisation as spatial cues. In our experiments, novel objects were categorised on the basis of two spatial (colour and shape) and two dynamic properties (action and path). The 'action' of an object referred to its intrinsic motion pattern, whereas 'path' referred to an object's extrinsic motion pattern, ie the route an object took. The task for the participant was to first learn to categorise prototype objects, and then categorise new exemplar objects which varied in number and type of properties in common with the prototype. We were specifically interested whether dynamic properties were used for categorisation as often as spatial properties. In earlier experiments, we found that all properties were relevant for categorisation with the exception of 'path'. We found that this result was not due to 'path' being less salient than other properties. In new experiments, we rendered the 'action' property redundant and found that 'path' was now used for categorisation. We reasoned that path may not have been initially used with action because of temporal-order effects. Our findings argue for a cue-integrated model of object representation.