One shot generalization in humans revealed through a drawing task

Abstract

Humans have the striking ability to learn and generalize new visual concepts from just a single exemplar. We suggest that when presented with a novel object, observers identify its significant features and infer a generative model of its shape, allowing them to mentally synthesize plausible variants. To test this, we showed participants abstract 2D shapes ( Exemplars) and asked them to draw new objects ( Variations) belonging to the same class. We show that this procedure created genuine novel categories. In line with our hypothesis, particular features of each Exemplar were preserved in its Variations and there was striking agreement between participants about which shape features were most distinctive. Also, we show that strategies to create Variations were strongly driven by part structure: new objects typically modified individual parts (e.g., limbs) of the Exemplar, often preserving part order, sometimes altering it. Together, our findings suggest that sophisticated internal generative models are key to how humans analyze and generalize from single exemplars.