Visual Communication of Object Concepts at Different Levels of Abstraction

People can produce drawings of specific entities (e.g., Garfield), as well general categories "cat"). What explains this ability to such varied even highly familiar object concepts? We hypothesized that drawing objects at different levels abstraction depends on both sensory information and representational goals, intended portray a recently seen preserve more detail than those represent category. Participants drew cued either with photo or category label. For each cue type, half the participants aimed draw exemplar; other found label-cued were most recognizable basic level, whereas photo-cued exemplar least recognizable. Together, these findings highlight importance task context for explaining how people use communicate visual concepts in ways.