PEOPLE THINK IN TERMS OF OBJECTS. As we perceive the world, we attempt to pick out "things," and then we try to group those things into familiar categories so that we can predict their characteristics or behavior.

Can you find the object in this image? The light and dark pattern and high contrast make it very difficult to make out, but one’s brain tries very hard to find an objects in the picture. We try to perceive objects.

The dalmation is on the right side of the image, facing away from the viewer with its nose on the ground near the center.

After perceiving an object, we immediately try to classify or categorize it, in order to make predictions about its characteristics.

Imagine the difference if you classified the object in the image above as a statue rather than an animal. You would predict differences in characteristics, such as hardness and softness, and in behavior, such as movement or sound.

If we didn't categorize objects, we would waste a great deal of time investigating each new object we encountered. If you couldn't categorize something as an apple, you wouldn't know that it was safe to eat without exhaustive experimentation.

Peole use several strategies to organize objects into categories.

We often notice similarities between the objects we see and our mental image of objects that are "typical" of a category. How close is this object to a prototypical "dog?"

We also tend to try to recognize an object's parts and then infer the identity of the object. For instance, we can quickly tag an object with beaks and wings and feathers as belonging to the "bird" category.

We also look at actions we can perform on the object (based on its parts), and the context in which we perceive it.

Bob Hoffman, PhD.