Cognitive Study On Category Specificity In Visual Search

Previous studies show that certain brain-damaged patients exhibit specific impairment to specific category objects,that is,"category specificity".Other studies show that people tend to show attentional advantage to specific category objects.The most interesting one is the attentional advantage to specific category objects,such as animate objects.The attentional advantage to animate objects makes those who hold the theory of evolution think that this advantage is the alert response of the ancestors to the predators in order to survive,that is,instinct.However,cognitive psychologists believe that category specificity is not only expressed at the semantic level,but also based on the neural structure of the brain.Therefore,for the category-specific impairment for living things and nonliving things,later researchers proposed two large theoretical hypotheses based on whether the semantic memory system is unified or not.One genre believes that information representations about living things and nonliving things are stored separately in the brain,that is,the semantic memory system is bipartite.The category specificity is due to damage in specific brain regions.This view is validated in some patients with brain damage.However,from this perspective,we can only attribute the attentional advantage to animate objects to human instinct,and cannot explain it at the cognitive level.Another genre believes that people have only one semantic memory system,and all information representations of living things and nonliving things are stored in one memory system.The category-specific impairment and attentional advantage to animate objects are due to the special spatial distribution of neural networks that store these features.Since the neural network that stores information about living things is more densely distributed in the spatial location of the brain,and the correlation between the features of living things is higher,this causes category-specific impairment and attentional advantage to animate objects.For example,most animals have two characteristics of mouth and nose,and the correlation between two features is high.After the discovery of category-specific IV impairment for living things and nonliving things,more category-specific impairment phenomena such as faces,fruits,vegetables,organs,furniture,etc.were discovered.Thus,it is not convincing that the semantic information of living things and nonliving things is stored separately in the brain,and that the occurrence of category-specific impairment originating from the damage of the relevant brain regions storing information of living things and nonliving things is not convincing.At present,based on the dichotomy of the semantic memory system,the researchers study the domain specificity that occurs in the change detection for both animate and inanimate categories.He believes that the categorization of visual attention and attentional advantage to animate objects are derived from semantic categorization,that is,high-level semantic knowledge guides visual attention.The categorization of semantic levels leads to the emergence of attentional advantage,and the storage of animate and inanimate information is separate.However,the result of this study is not ideal.Therefore,this study raises doubts about the occurrence of attentional advantage in the categorization of animate and inanimate objects at the semantic level.This study considers that category specificity of animate and inanimate objects and the attentional advantage to animate objects are not based on the dichotomy of the semantic level,but based on the classification of the level of perceptual features.Since the neural structures that store the information in the brain are relatively nearer,the correlation between animate object characteristics is higher.It is easier for the brain to activate animate information,which leads to visual categorization and attentional advantage to animate objects.Kaiser's visual search experiment is used to study both animate and inanimate categories on category specificity in the state of inadvertent notice.The experiment is divided into three parts.The subjects are required to search for the cube and the cuboid according to the clue prompt.Experiments are used to explore the differences in attentional competition between animate and inanimate objects as distracter stimuli,and to provide evidence for stronger association between animate features than inanimate features.The hypotheses are that humans have only one memory system,and the visual specificity of animate and inanimate objects is not based on the dichotomy of the semantic system;since animate object characteristics have higher correlation,and the brain activates animate information more easily,which lead to the category specificity and attentional advantage to animate objects.It is found that there is difference in the competition for attention between animate objects and inanimate objects as distracter stimuli,and the animate objects are less competitive with attention as distracter stimuli.It can be seen that the activation of animate information is easier,and the correlation between animate object characteristics may be higher.