Open AccessEye-tracking study of inanimate objects
Author(s) -
Vanja Ković,
Kim Plunkett,
Gert Westermann
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
psihologija
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.222
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1451-9283
pISSN - 0048-5705
DOI - 10.2298/psi0904417k
Subject(s) - animacy , cognitive psychology , psychology , feature (linguistics) , eye tracking , eye movement , visual attention , visual processing , communication , computer science , artificial intelligence , cognition , perception , linguistics , neuroscience , philosophy
Unlike the animate objects, where participants were consistent in their looking patterns, for inanimates it was difficult to identify both consistent areas of fixations and a consistent order of fixations. Furthermore, in comparison to animate objects, in animates received significantly shorter total looking time, shorter longest looks and a smaller number of overall fixations. However, as with animates, looking patterns did not systematically differ between the naming and non-naming conditions. These results suggested that animacy, but not labelling, impacts on looking behavior in this paradigm. In the light of feature-based accounts of semantic memory organization, one could interpret these findings as suggesting that processing of the animate objects is based on the saliency/diagnosticity of their visual features (which is then reflected through participants eye-movements towards those features), whereas processing of the inanimate objects is based more on functional features (which cannot be easily captured by looking behavior in such a paradigm)