Adults prefer to look at real objects more than photos

Abstract

Recent research has found that real objects appear to be processed for longer than visually matched photographs, both in terms of brain activation in adults and looking times in infants. Here we asked whether adults, like infants, would prefer to look at real objects over pictures. A head-fixed eye tracker was used to record gaze locations in adult participants while they viewed a pair of stimuli side by side. Half the stimuli were physically real items while the other half were photos, matched for size and viewpoint, presented on a computer monitor. Paired items were visually similar but not identical (e.g., a real orange could be paired with a photo of a peach or vice versa). Participants spent longer looking at the real object compared to the photo (57% vs. 43% of total looking time). These results suggest similar real-object preferences for adults as infants that may account for a variety of other behavioral and neuroimaging differences. More generally, looking preference techniques appear informative in adults as well as infants and provide a new paradigm for the study of real-object preferences and the factors that drive them.

Acknowledgement: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada