Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33046861›Full record

ArticleNature human behaviour2020

Revealing the multidimensional mental representations of natural objects underlying human similarity judgements.

Martin N Hebart, Charles Y Zheng, Francisco Pereira, Chris I Baker

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Nature human behaviour, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 126 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
126citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

126 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. A solution to generalized learning from small training sets found in infants' repeated visual experiences of individual objects.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Multidimensional Feature Tuning in Category Selective Areas of Human Visual Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Shape-similarity gain: A selection profile for simple objects.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Spatial and semantic memory reorganize a hippocampal long-axis gradient.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  19. Review
  20. Article

66 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Martin N HebartLaboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. hebart@cbs.mpg.de.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7257-428X
Charles Y ZhengMachine Learning Core, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3427-0845
Francisco PereiraMachine Learning Core, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2773-3426
Chris I BakerLaboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6861-8964

Funding

Object, face, body and scene representations in the human brainZIAMH002909 · NIMH · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH · PI BAKER, CHRIS · 2009 to 2025
$25.5M
Machine Learning TeamZICMH002968 · NIMH · NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH · PI PEREIRA, FRANCISCO · 2018 to 2025
$13.9M
Intramural NIH HHS ZIA MH002909Intramural NIH HHS ZIC MH002968
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Objects can be characterized according to a vast number of possible criteria (such as animacy, shape, colour and function), but some dimensions are more useful than others for making sense of the objects around us. To identify these core dimensions of object representations, we developed a data-driven computational model of similarity judgements for real-world images of 1,854 objects. The model captured most explainable variance in similarity judgements and produced 49 highly reproducible and meaningful object dimensions that reflect various conceptual and perceptual properties of those objects. These dimensions predicted external categorization behaviour and reflected typicality judgements of those categories. Furthermore, humans can accurately rate objects along these dimensions, highlighting their interpretability and opening up a way to generate similarity estimates from object dimensions alone. Collectively, these results demonstrate that human similarity judgements can be captured by a fairly low-dimensional, interpretable embedding that generalizes to external behaviour.

Indexed as

Models, TheoreticalAdultColor PerceptionConcept FormationForm PerceptionHumansJudgmentPattern Recognition, Visual

Identifiers

PMID33046861
PMCPMC7666026

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.