Color-Object Semantics Affects Object Detection

A fundamental aspect of scene perception is detecting figures against backgrounds. Several priors are known to contribute to figure detection. In particular, familiar configuration is a figural prior: participants are more likely to detect an object on the side of the border of bipartite displays where a portion of an upright familiar object lies. Activating object semantics through verbal priming enhances this effect. However, the role of color semantics has been ignored. We investigated whether color semantics influences familiar configuration effects on figure detection. Observers viewed bipartite displays depicting familiar objects (e.g., pineapples) with a strongly associated color on one side (e.g., yellow) and a weakly associated color on the other side (e.g., purple) (right/left sides were balanced). Strongly associated colors appeared equally often on the familiar object side (congruent condition) and the complementary side (incongruent condition). Each color appeared equally often with its paired object (e.g., yellow-pineapple) and a different weakly associated, object (e.g., yellow-grapes). In these chromatic displays, half the strongly associated colors were lighter than the medium gray backdrop; half were darker. We also included achromatic displays matched in lightness to chromatic displays. First, participants viewed 82-ms displays followed by a mask and reported which side was the figure. Reports of a figure on the familiar object side were scored as accurate detection. Next, participants rated the association between each color and the name of each object (e.g., “pineapple”). A mixed effects model showed that the effect of color congruency on object detection depended on the difference between associations of the objects with their congruent versus incongruent color (p<.001). This interaction was driven by facilitation in the congruent condition: accuracy increased with increased association difference (p<.001). These results reveal that concurrently activated color-object semantics, a previously ignored factor in perceptual organization, is a prior for figure detection.