Domain-Specificity in Shape Categorization and Perception

We examine the influence of domain-specific knowledge on the process of learning and representing simple visual categories. Depending on whether subjects' construe simple objects as living kinds or machines, they show differential sensitivity to the importance of basic shape features. In particular, subjects who treated the objects as machines placed less importance on coarse shape differences unrelated to the described function of the objects in both categorization and productive (drawing) tasks. These findings suggest that domain-specific functional understanding of objects may influence the formation of shape categories, and perhaps the perception of these shapes.