# Visual communication of object concepts at different levels of abstraction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02775 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02775/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 23 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Unsupervised Feature Learning via Non-Parametric Instance-level Discrimination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01978/) (2018)
- [Pragmatic inference and visual abstraction enable contextual flexibility during visual communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.04448/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [CLIPasso: Semantically-Aware Object Sketching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05822/) (2022)
- [SEVA: Leveraging sketches to evaluate alignment between human and machine visual abstraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03035/) (2023)
- [Human-Guided Complexity-Controlled Abstractions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17550/) (2023)
- [Learning Dense Correspondences between Photos and Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12967/) (2023)
- [Generative Visual Communication in the Era of Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18727/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

People can produce drawings of specific entities (e.g., Garfield), as well as general categories (e.g., "cat"). What explains this ability to produce such varied drawings of even highly familiar object concepts? We hypothesized that drawing objects at different levels of abstraction depends on both sensory information and representational goals, such that drawings intended to portray a recently seen object preserve more detail than those intended to represent a category. Participants drew objects cued either with a photo or a category label. For each cue type, half the participants aimed to draw a specific exemplar; the other half aimed to draw the category. We found that label-cued category drawings were the most recognizable at the basic level, whereas photo-cued exemplar drawings were the least recognizable. Together, these findings highlight the importance of task context for explaining how people use drawings to communicate visual concepts in different ways.