Confounds in pictorial sets: The role of complexity and familiarity in basic-level picture processing

Complexity is conventionally defined as the level of detail or intricacy contained within a picture. The study of complexity has received relatively little attention—in part, because of the absence of an acceptable metric. Traditionally, normative ratings of complexity have been based on human judgm...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavior research methods 2008-02, Vol.40 (1), p.116-129
Main Authors: Forsythe, Alex, Mulhern, Gerry, Sawey, Martin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aging - psychology
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Child
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive Psychology
Data Interpretation, Statistical
Humans
Photic Stimulation
Psychology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
R&D
Reaction Time - physiology
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Research & development
Studies
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Complexity is conventionally defined as the level of detail or intricacy contained within a picture. The study of complexity has received relatively little attention—in part, because of the absence of an acceptable metric. Traditionally, normative ratings of complexity have been based on human judgments. However, this study demonstrates that published norms for visual complexity are biased. Familiarity and learning influence the subjective complexity scores for nonsense shapes, with a significant training × familiarity interaction [ F (1,52) = 17.53, p < .05]. Several image-processing techniques were explored as alternative measures of picture and image complexity. A perimeter detection measure correlates strongly with human judgments of the complexity of line drawings of real-world objects and nonsense shapes and captures some of the processes important in judgments of subjective complexity, while removing the bias due to familiarity effects.
ISSN:1554-351X
1554-3528
DOI:10.3758/BRM.40.1.116