Author: Fumio Kanbe

Title: Topological Sensitivity in the Recognition of Disoriented Figures

Article information: Kanbe, F. (2018). Topological Sensitivity in the Recognition of Disoriented Figures. i-Perception 9(6), 1-11.

doi: 10.1177/2041669518809717

Article URL: https//doi.org/10.1177/2041669518809717

Abstract: A previous study by the author found that discrimination latencies for figure pairs with the same topological structure (isomorphic pairs) were longer than for pairs with different topological structures (nonisomorpic pairs). These results suggest that topological sensitivity occurs during figure recognition. However, sameness was judged in terms of both shape and orientation. Using this criterion, faster discrimination of nonisomorphic pairs may have arisen from the detection of differences in the corresponding locations of the paired figures, which is not a topological property. The current study examined whether topological sensitivity occurs even when identity judgments are based on the sameness of shapes, irrespective of their orientation, where the sameness of location is not ensured. The current results suggested the involvement of topological sensitivity, indicating that processing of structural properties (invariant features) of a figure may be prioritized over processing of superficial features, such as location, length, and angles, in figure recognition.

Email address of the corresponding author: kanbe[at]fc.hakuoh.ac.jp([at] を@に置き換えてください)