Constructing structural descriptions

The author discusses the function of structural descriptions (SDs) during o bject identification, as revealed by immediate priming experiments. Several claims are made. First, SDs can change dynamically in complexity, from bei ng detailed during initial identification to being somewhat abstract when p rocessing is extended over time, as during scene perception. Second, during initial identification SDs encode relations between components, including somewhat detailed size relations. Third, identification is a process in whi ch SDs are constructed over time. In new experiments that are reported, con struction (identification) was facilitated by primes that provided a higher -order structural relation-orientation of axis or reference frame. These ef fects varied with the orientation of the critical features. The results wer e inconsistent with an alternative explanation of facilitation effects in t erms of feature suppression.