Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 20, 2026

Generating Strictly Controlled Stimuli for Figure Recognition Experiments
Published on: March 18, 2019
The influence of surface and edge-based visual similarity on object recognition
Keith R Laws1, Tim M Gale, Verity C Leeson
1Department of Psychology, London Guildhall University, UK.
Abstract:
The role of 'visual similarity' has been emphasised in object recognition and in particular, for category-specific agnosias. [Laws and Gale, 2002] recently described a measure of pixel-level visual overlap for line drawings (Euclidean Overlap: EO[line]) that distinguished living and nonliving things and predicted normal naming errors and latencies ( [Laws et al., 2002]). Nevertheless, it is important to extend such analyses to stimuli other than line drawings. We therefore developed the same measure for greyscale versions of the same stimuli (EO[grey]), i.e., that contain shading and texture information. EO[grey], however, failed to differentiate living from nonliving things and failed to correlate with naming latencies to the greyscale images. By contrast, EO[line] did correlate with the naming latencies. This suggests that similarity of edge information is more influential than similarity of surface characteristics for naming and for categorically separating living and nonliving things (be they line drawings or greyscale images).
Related Concept Videos
Association Areas of the Cortex
Prefrontal Association Area: This area is located in the frontal lobe and is involved in planning, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. It connects with primary motor areas,...
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Modeling and Similitude
Factors Influencing Attraction III: Similarity
Causes of Similarity-Dissimilarity Effect
Oriented Surfaces

