Scale ambiguities in material recognition

Many natural materials have complex, multi-scale structures. Consequently, the inferred identity of a surface can vary with the assumed spatial scale of the scene: a plowed field seen from afar can resemble corduroy seen up close. We investigated this ‘material-scale ambiguity’ using 87 photographs of diverse materials (e.g., water, sand, stone, metal, and wood). Across two experiments, separate groups of participants (N = 72 adults) provided judgements of the material category depicted in each image, either with or without manipulations of apparent distance (by verbal instructions, or adding objects of familiar size). Our results demonstrate that these manipulations can cause identical images to be assigned to completely different material categories, depending on the assumed scale. Under challenging conditions, therefore, the categorization of materials is susceptible to simple manipulations of apparent distance, revealing a striking example of top-down effects in the interpretation of image features.