Identity is a transitive relation, according to all standard accounts. Necessarily, if x = y and y = z, then x = z. However, people sometimes say that two objects, x and z, are the same as a third, y, even when x and z have different properties (thus, x = y and y = z, but x ≠ z). In the present experiments, participants read stories about an iceberg that breaks into two icebergs, one to the east and the (...) other to the west. Many participants (32–54%, in baseline conditions across experiments) decided that both successors were the original iceberg, despite the different spatial locations of the successors. Experiment 1 shows that this tendency is not due to participants failing to understand both to mean both are simultaneously the original. Similarly, Experiment 2 demonstrates that the tendency is not solely due to their interpreting the question to be about properties of the icebergs rather than about the icebergs themselves. Experiments 3 and 4 suggest, instead, that participants may understand Which is the original? to mean Which, in its own right, is entitled to be the original? Emphasizing entitlement increases the number of seemingly intransitive responses, whereas emphasizing the formal properties of identity decreases them. (shrink)

In "Things and Places," Zenon Pylyshyn argues that the process of incrementally constructing perceptual representations, solving the binding problem (determining which properties go together), and, more generally, grounding perceptual ...

The task of tracking a small number (about four or five) visual targets within a larger set of identical items, each of which moves randomly and independently, has been used extensively to study object-based attention. Analysis of this multiple object tracking (MOT) task shows that it logically entails solving the correspondence problem for each target over time, and thus that the individuality of each of the targets must be tracked. This suggests that when successfully tracking objects, observers must also keep (...) track of them as unique individuals. Yet in the present studies we show that observers are poor at recalling the identity of successfully tracked objects (as specified by a unique identifier associated with each target, such as a number or starting location). Studies also show that the identity of targets tends to be lost when they come close together and that this tendency is greater between pairs of targets than between targets and nontargets. The significance of this finding in relation to the multiple object tracking paradigm is discussed. (shrink)