Citation

Kanbe F. Iperception 2018; 9(6): e2041669518809717.

Affiliation

Faculty of Education, Hakuoh University, Oyama, Tochigi, Japan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/2041669518809717

PMID

30479735

PMCID

PMC6240979

Abstract

A previous study by the author found that discrimination latencies for figure pairs with the same topological structure (isomorphic pairs) were longer than for pairs with different topological structures (nonisomorphic pairs). These results suggest that topological sensitivity occurs during figure recognition. However, sameness was judged in terms of both shape and orientation. Using this criterion, faster discrimination of nonisomorphic pairs may have arisen from the detection of differences in the corresponding locations of the paired figures, which is not a topological property. The current study examined whether topological sensitivity occurs even when identity judgments are based on the sameness of shapes, irrespective of their orientation, where the sameness of location is not ensured. The current results suggested the involvement of topological sensitivity, indicating that processing of structural properties (invariant features) of a figure may be prioritized over processing of superficial features, such as location, length, and angles, in figure recognition.

Language: en

Keywords

graph invariants; isomorphism; mental rotation; recognition of figures; topology