Task and object learning in visual recognition

Human performance in object recognition changes with practice, even in the absence of feedback to the subject. The nature of the change can reveal important properties of the process of recognition. We report an experiment designed to distinguish between non-specific task learning and object-specific practice effects. The results of the experiment support the notion that learning through modification of object representations can be separated from less interesting effects of practice, if appropriate response measures (specifically, the coefficient of variation of response time over views of an object) are used. Furthermore, the results, obtained with computer-generated amoeba-like objects, corroborate previous findings regarding the development of canonical views and related phenomena with practice. @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1991) This report describes research done a t the Massachusetts Institute of Technology within the Center for Biological Information Processing in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Whitaker College. The Center's research is sponsored by grant N0001491-J-1270 from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Cognitive and Neural Sciences Division; and by National Science Foundation grant IRI-8719394. SE is at the Department of Applied Mat hemat ics and Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel. HHB and ES are a t the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02192.