Core dimensions of human material perception

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Schmidt, Filipp; Hebart, Martin N.; Schmid, Alexandra C.; Fleming, Roland W.
• 署名单位: Justus Liebig University Giessen; Philipps University Marburg; Philipps University Marburg; Philipps University Marburg; Justus Liebig University Giessen; Max Planck Society; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-10154
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2417202122
• 发表日期: 2025-03-11
• 关键词: visual features; material recognition; REPRESENTATIONS; Similarity; CATEGORIES

摘要

Visually categorizing and comparing materials is crucial for everyday behavior, but what organizational principles underlie our mental representation of materials? Here, we used a large- scale data- driven approach to uncover core latent dimensions of material representations from behavior. First, we created an image dataset of 200 systematically sampled materials and 600 photographs (STUFF dataset, https://osf.io/myutc/). Using these images, we next collected 1.87 million triplet similarity judgments and used a computational model to derive a set of sparse, positive dimensions underlying these judgments. The resulting multidimensional embedding space predicted independent material similarity judgments and the similarity matrix of all images close to the human intersubject consistency. We found that representations of individual images were captured by a combination of 36 material dimensions that were highly reproducible and interpretable, comprising perceptual (e.g., grainy, blue) as well as conceptual (e.g., mineral, viscous) dimensions. These results provide the foundation for a comprehensive understanding of how humans make sense of materials.