SERVICIO ESPECIAL

Keeping this definition of what defines an object, when referring to the term familiarity, this simply denotes an object which have a distinct category where information about that object is represented and most importantly not subjected to temporality and can in any condition be recovered and thus used to recognize, differentiate, and understand the object in typical and atypical presentations. Thus depending on the categorical theory one adopts, this will inherently determine the requirements an object must meet if it is to be designated as a familiar object.

Take for example the definitional theory on category. Theorist who adapt this position argues that in order for a given object to be designated a distinct category it must meet that category’s definitional requirement. In other words if a given object is to be considered a member of a given category it must meet

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the “formal feature definition” which intrinsically defines that category (Wittgenstein, 1953). Information included in this definition affords the human observer general information which is used not only to identify a given object but further recognize the special features which distinguishes it from those within as well as outside of its category. For example based upon the formal feature definition of a fruit, that is, it generally has a restricted range of colours, has a stem and seeds are typically found on the inside - a banana would be considered a member of this category while a coconut would not. Such example should by itself raise some concerns as to the legitimacy of such an approach. Nonetheless, definitional theorists would designate an object as familiar if and only if that object has met the definitional requirement of that category and thus resembles other objects within the same category.

The second – exemplar theory - argues that in the physical world there exists a wide range of objects (or members) that generally fall into various but never a single category. Thus what ultimately forces a member into a single category is intrinsically phenomenological, that is, specific remembered experiences (or exemplars) stored in memory by the visual brain, in which newly presented members are compared to, in order to verify whether they belong to, or are representative of that particular category (Nosofsky, 1986). For example although a banana may be considered a member of the following categories: food, fruit, or the colour yellow, what determines its distinct category is its degree of similarity to the exemplars which currently make up. Thus if a banana is to be considered an object within the yellow category, its experienced features has to be similar to the exemplar objects which have already been stored in this category. While experience may play an important role in the categorization of various objects in the physical world it should be immediately clear that such a theory- exemplar theory may not be the most economical approach, particularly because of its reliance on experience which has an intrinsically indirect and ambiguous nature (Dennet, 1986). This approach eventually slows down observers’ ability to quickly make a judgement with respect to the object’s actual identity whenever it happens to be in question. Nonetheless the exemplar theorists would designate an object as familiar if and only if the object is frequently experienced in a way that the object matches the already experienced objects previously stored in memory.

The last group of theorists – prototypical theorists - contend that what actually determines a member’s natural category is the conceptual (Rosch, 1973; Storms et al, 2000). Thus if a given object is presented, by actively exploring the object rather than passively receiving information about the object, the observer is able to match the feature of the presented object to the features of the of the conceptual (or prototypical) object - an abstract average of the features of all the members within a given category. For example a banana may belong to the fruit category because its visual features strongly resembles the abstract average of the category’s prototypical object - an object that has a constant shape and colour conjunction, closely related object to hand size ratio, highly polished or containing coatings with finely dispersed pigments and has seeds on the inside. In light of this, the prototypical theorists would naturally designate an object as familiar if and only if the object’s features are close to the features of that category’s prototypical object. With this mind, we should immediately see from this approach that unlike the exemplar approach to categorization, the visual brain is able to quickly identify an object’s natural category which in turn allows the observer to quickly recover the identity of a given object. While prototypical theory is much more economical and appears to be the primary method the visual brain uses to categorize objects in the

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physical world, it does not explain non-prototypical category members – the incorrect classification of object. For example most observers typically classify cucumber – a fruit - as a vegetable. Thus if prototypical theory is in fact the primary method the visual brain uses to categorize a given object, which in some cases led to the misclassification of an object (e.g. fruit as a vegetable), there must be an secondary method it employs which later used to verify whether the members which has been initially assigned to a given category actual belong to the category. While there are those who argue that such verification process is done by exemplars, there may be a different explanation which will be discussed in chapter 5