Perceiving Real World Scenes: The Role of a Prior Glance

Abstract

When does prior familiarity with a scene facilitate its processing? Subjects performed a scene-comprehension task in which they attempted to detect the incongruity in the relationship between an object and its real-world scene context. In 100 msec, presentations of line drawings of such scenes, objects could be in a normal location or else inappropriately positioned (e.g., a fire hydrant on top of a mailbox), sized (e.g., the hydrant looking larger than a truck) or appearing to float in air. The results from two experiments provide approximate boundary conditions under which prior familiarity with a specific scene will facilitate subsequent perceptual processing of that scene. Neither priming with a verbal label nor repeated 100 msec non-consecutive exposures were found to improve subsequent perceptual processing, but a single 500 msec, visual prime of the background itself was effective.