Does consistent scene context facilitate object perception?

The conclusion that scene knowledge interacts with object perception depend s on evidence that object detection is facilitated by consistent scene cont ext. Experiment I replicated the I. Biederman, R. J. Mezzanotte, and J. C. Rabinowitz (1982) object-detection paradigm. Detection performance was high er for semantically consistent versus inconsistent objects. However, when t he paradigm was modified to control for response bias (Experiments 2 and 3) or when response bias was eliminated by means of a forced-choice procedure (Experiment 4), no such advantage obtained. When an additional source of b iasing information was eliminated by presenting the object label after the scene (Experiments 3 and 4), there was either no effect of consistency (Exp eriment 4) or an inconsistent object advantage (Experiment 3). These result s suggest that object perception is not facilitated by consistent scene con text.