Aspects of psychological computation in scene and face recognition

摘要

Different classifications of an identical visual stimulus may require different perceptual properties from the visual input. How do processes of object and scene categorization use the information associated with different perceptual spatial scales? One scenario suggests that recognition should use coarse blobs before fine scale edges because scale usage is perceptually determined. However, perceptual determination neglects one important aspect of any recognition task: The information demands of the considered classification of the input. We review evidence suggesting that scale usage could be flexibly determined by the diagnosticity of scale-specific cues for different categorizations of scenes and faces.