Visual resemblance and interaction history jointly constrain pictorial meaning.

ABSTRACT: How do drawings-ranging from detailed illustrations to schematic diagrams-reliably convey meaning? Do viewers understand drawings based on how strongly they resemble an entity (i.e., as images) or based on socially mediated conventions (i.e., as symbols)? Here we evaluate a cognitive account of pictorial meaning in which visual and social information jointly support visual communication. Pairs of participants used drawings to repeatedly communicate the identity of a target object among multiple distractor objects. We manipulated social cues across three experiments and a full replication, finding that participants developed object-specific and interaction-specific strategies for communicating more efficiently over time, beyond what task practice or a resemblance-based account alone could e

SUBMITTER: Hawkins RD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10110538 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature