Abstract
It is well known that multiple interpretations are activated when an object needs to be categorized. It has been suggested that distinct interpretations may share large similarities in visual appearance. It is not clear, however, which aspect of perceptual similarity is most important for response selection. We therefore investigated the similarity between response candidates by conducting a double-naming experiment. Observers were asked to name two possible interpretations of a morphed figure. Information about the degree of similarity between the objects used for morphing (i.e. extreme objects of a morph series) was previously collected (Hartendorp et al., 2010) for the aspects of shape, number of parts, intrinsic part structure, semantics and phonology. We used this information to reveal which aspect of similarity was shared between the two responses on the double-naming task. The findings showed that two extremes of a morph series showing high similarity on the aspect of intrinsic part structure resulted in morphed figures being interpreted as both the dominant and nondominant object. The other similarity aspects had no influence on the interpretations. We conclude that selection of response candidates is based on similarity in intrinsic part structure. These findings are discussed in terms of the skeletal representation of an object.
European Science Foundation.