Strategies for object identification and confidence: influence of appearance, amount of context, and familiarity.

In an experimental study of the everyday, what-is-this? perceptual encounter, the strategies subjects used to identify a focal object were influenced by the object's physical appearance, the amount of context in which it was displayed, and subjects' familiarity with the object. These factors also affected subjects' confidence in the accuracy of their identifications. The results appear to support the contention that visual processing is a middle-out rather than either a top-down or bottom-up sequence.