We measured reaction times and effects of stimulus durations for material category discrimination tasks in psychophysical experiments. In addition, we analyzed these temporal properties focusing on the relationship to perceptual surface qualities on objects such as glossiness and roughness. In the results, visual surface features (e.g., glossiness and translucency) more strongly affected the temporal properties when reaction times and stimulus durations were short, while non-visual surface features (e.g., roughness and heaviness) more strongly affected the temporal properties when they were long. These results suggest that the mechanisms underlying visual and non-visual feature processing may differ in terms of relationship to higher-order material recognition, or processing time and processing load.
