[The effect of visual similarity on picture categorization and identification]

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of visual similarity on picture categorization (Experiment 1) and picture identification (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1 subjects took more time to categorize the pictures of fruits, visually similar to vegetables, than the words which showed their names. On the contrary, subjects took less time to categorize the pictures of animals, visually dissimilar to fruits and vegetables, than the words. In Experiment 2, it took more time for subjects to identify the pictures of animals primed by the same category members than those primed by fruits. The pictures of animals showed the highest visual similarity among three categories. Those results suggest that visual similarity could affect picture categorization and identification as semantic similarity could. We also discussed the notions of visual representation and category specificity in semantic processing.