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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 8, 2025

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Creating Objects and Object Categories for Studying Perception and Perceptual Learning

Published on: November 2, 2012

Learning arbitrary stimulus-reward associations for naturalistic stimuli involves transition from learning about

Shiva Farashahi¹, Jane Xu², Shih-Wei Wu³

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, NH 03755, United States of America; Flatiron Institute, Simons Foundation, New York, NY 10010, United States of America.

|September 22, 2020

Summary

Humans initially use feature-based learning for both abstract and naturalistic stimuli, but adapt faster to object-based learning with naturalistic stimuli, though feature influence remains strong overall.

Keywords:

Curse of dimensionality Naturalistic tasks Reinforcement learning Value-based learning

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Learning and Memory

Background:

Cognitive processes are often studied with abstract stimuli, but naturalistic stimuli can enhance cognitive capacities like working memory.
Previous research showed learning stimulus-reward associations involves shifting from feature-based to object-based learning.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if similar learning strategies (feature-based vs. object-based) are used for naturalistic stimuli.
To compare learning strategies between abstract and naturalistic stimuli.

Main Methods:

Human subjects learned multidimensional stimulus-reward associations.
Stimuli included both abstract (defined by features) and naturalistic (perceived as objects) types.
Learning strategies were analyzed by tracking transitions between feature-based and object-based learning.

Main Results:

Subjects initially employed feature-based learning for both abstract and naturalistic stimuli.
The initial feature-based learning was less pronounced for naturalistic stimuli, with a faster transition to object-based learning.
Unexpectedly, feature-based learning remained more prevalent overall and at steady state for naturalistic stimuli.

Conclusions:

Feature-based learning is a general initial strategy for multidimensional stimulus-reward association learning.
Naturalistic stimuli, despite being perceived as objects, show a stronger influence of individual features on learning outcomes.
The perception of naturalistic stimuli as objects facilitates faster adaptation to object-based learning but does not eliminate the impact of features.