role of location information in identifying degraded objects

Across three experiments, we assessed how location and color information contributes to the identification of an object whose image has been degraded, making its identity ambiguous. In Experiment 1, some of the target objects had fixed locations within the scene. We found that subjects used this location information during search and later to identify the blurred target objects. In Experiment 2, we tested whether location and color information can be combined to identify degraded objects, and results were inconclusive. In Experiment 3, both the location and color of each object was variable but statistically predictive of the object's identity. We found that subjects used both sources of information-color and location - equally when identifying the blurred image of the object. Overall, these findings suggest that location information may be as determining as intrinsic feature information to identify objects when the objects' intrinsic features are degraded.