TRAINING GREEBLE EXPERTS - A FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING EXPERT OBJECT RECOGNITION PROCESSES

Twelve participants were trained to be experts at identifying a set of 'Greebles', novel objects that, like faces, all share a common spatia l configuration. Tests comparing expert with novice performance reveal ed: (1) a surprising mix of generalizability and specificity in expert object recognition processes; and (2) that expertise is a multi-facet ed phenomenon, neither adequately described by a single term nor adequ ately assessed by a single task. Greeble recognition by a simple neura l-network model is also evaluated, and the model is found to account s urprisingly well for both generalization and individuation using a sin gle set of processes and representations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Lt d. All rights reserved.