Measuring nonvisual knowledge about object categories: The Semantic Vanderbilt Expertise Test

Abstract

How much do people differ in their ability to recognize objects, and what is the source of these differences? To address the first question, psychologists created visual learning tests like the Cambridge Face Memory Test (Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006) and the Vanderbilt Expertise Test (VET; McGugin et al., 2012). The second question requires consideration of the influence of both innate potential and experience, but experience is difficult to measure. One solution is to measure the products of experience beyond perceptual knowledge, specifically non-visual semantic knowledge. For instance, the relation between semantic and perceptual knowledge can help clarify the nature of object recognition deficits in brain damaged patients (Barton et al., 2009). We present a reliable measure of non-perceptual knowledge in a format applicable across categories. The Semantic Vanderbilt Expertise Test (SVET) measures knowledge of relevant category-specific nomenclature. We present SVETs for eight categories: cars, planes, Transformers, dinosaurs, shoes, birds, leaves, and mushrooms. The SVET demonstrates good reliability and domain-specific validity. We find partial support for the idea that the only source of domain-specific shared variance between the VET and SVET is experience with a category. We also demonstrate the utility of the SVET-Bird in experts. The SVET can facilitate the study of individual differences in visual recognition.

Limited evidence of individual differences in holistic processing in different versions of the part-whole paradigm

“…To this end, we performed a second hierarchical regression on CFMT, adding VET accuracy in step 1 to preserve only face-specific ability before entering part and whole accuracy as predictors (Table 5). VET accuracy accounted for 16.2% of CFMT variance, consistent with prior work Van Gulick et al, 2015). Part accuracy accounted for 10.5% of facespecific variance and, critically, whole trial accuracy did not account for a significant amount of face-specific variance.…”

“…Finally, participants completed 36 trials where the target exemplar was not an identical image to the study exemplar and no feedback was provided. Different versions of the VET with different categories have been used (e.g., McGugin et al, 2012;Van Gulick et al, 2015). Here, we used VETs for five categories: motorcycles, planes, birds, houses, and butterflies.…”

Domain-specific reports of visual imagery vividness are not related to perceptual expertise

“…There is some evidence that participants are able to assess the vividness of their own visual imagery when comparing the vividness of their own imagery between trials (Pearson, Rademaker, & Tong, 2011), but only for the imagery of simple patterns, not imagery within an expertise domain. Cars represent a domain where self-reports of experience show a modest but significant relationship with visual skills (here, r 99 = .268; see also Van Gulick et al, 2015), whereas this relation is often absent in other domains (McGugin, Richler, et al, 2012;Van Gulick et al, 2015). Thus, it is interesting that even in this domain, the portion of variance in self-reports that predicts visual imagery scores is independent from the one that predicts perceptual performance for cars.…”

“…To measure other aspects of car expertise, we had the participants complete (1) a perceptual car expertise test measuring the ability to learn and recognize six target cars (the Vanderbilt Expertise Test, or VET; see McGugin, Richler, Herzmann, Speegle, & Gauthier, 2012), and (2) a semantic car expertise test measuring knowledge of car model names (the Semantic Vanderbilt Expertise Test, or SVET; see Van Gulick et al, 2015). Participants also completed the VET and SVET for birds, so that we had an expertise measure to contrast with car expertise.…”

Validation of the Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Test

“…We used the car subtest, as used in VanGulick et al (2016). Subjects studied images of six cars without labels for as long as they chose.…”