Published Papers That Used SuperLab

Koch & Abbey (submitted) found that pictures fragmented according to recognition-by-components (RBC) theory were recognized more frequently than pictures fragmented arbitrarily. However, Koch & Abbey used an object recognition task in which all the pictures were displayed at one time. Most object recognition studies require participants to identify one object at a time. In the present study, flash cards were constructed using the Koch & Abbey pictures. There were two types of pictures. One set of pictures was fragmented according to RBC theory while the other was fragmented arbitrarily. Participants were shown the flash cards at two distances. In the near condition, the objects subtended approximately 7 deg VA. In the far condition, objects subtended approximately 2 deg VA. An ANOVA revealed an effect of distance and version but no distance x version interaction. near objects wre easier to recognize than far objects and randomly fragmented pictures were easier to recognize than pictures fragmented according to RBC theory. A second experiment was conducted in which the fragmented objects from Experiment 1 were presented serially using SuperLab. An ANOVA yielded no difference between analog and digital versions. These experiments suggest that designing and interpreting object recognition studies can be very complex. Not only does the manner by which pictures are partially fragmented influence the perceptibility of the objects but the way in which the objects are presented and identified (Koch, Abbey, & Schmidt, 1995) also influence object recognition rates.