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Attention to distinguishing features in object recognition

This study advances the hypothesis that, in the course of object recognition, attention is directed to distinguishing features: visual information that is diagnostic of object identity in a specific context. In five experiments, observers performed an object categorization task involving drawings of fish (Experiments 1–4) and photographs of natural sea animals (Experiment 5). Allocation of attention to distinguishing and non-distinguishing features was examined using primed-matching (Experiment 1) and visual probe (Experiments 2, 4, 5) methods, and manipulated by spatial precuing (Experiment 3). Converging results indicated that in performing the object categorization task, attention was allocated to the distinguishing features in a context-dependent manner, and that such allocation facilitated performance. Based on the view that object recognition, like categorization, is essentially a process of discrimination between probable alternatives, the implications of the findings for the role of attention to distinguishing features in object recognition are discussed.