The effects of the relationships between object features on multiple-identity tracking

Simultaneous tracking of multiple moving objects is essential in tasks such as traffic control, automobile driving, and scene surveillance. Recently, an increasing number of studies have focused on the roles of object identity and location binding in unique target tracking tasks, but contradictory results have been reported. In the present study, we introduced for the first time the Stroop stimuli of Chinese characters to the multiple-identity tracking paradigm, taking advantage of the ease to control the overall size, familiarity, and visual complexity of the Chinese characters. The results showed that when the observers were asked to track unique objects that bear two distinct features, the feature conflict disrupted the tracking performance, even when the given object has a distinctive identity. Our data revealed that the internal disaccord of semantic and physical features on an object can disturb the identity-location binding process in a multiple-identity tracking task, but does not affect the location information significantly.