Abstract
Participants saw three versions of pictures of familiar objects: the original unaltered (axis-normal) pictures, axis-extended pictures in which the main axes of the axis-normal pictures were elongated, and axis-switched pictures in which objects that were originally horizontally elongated were depicted as vertically elongated and vice versa. Relative to axis-normal pictures, axis extension aided decisions about whether the picture of the object was wide or tall, and axis switching hindered these decisions for both upright and plane-misoriented views. Nevertheless, although these axis manipulations clearly influenced decisions about the location of the object’s main axis of elongation, axis-switched pictures were no harder to name than axis-extended pictures. Changing the depicted main axis of elongation by axis switching and axis extension did not influence object recognition in itself, whether for upright or for plane-misoriented views. This suggests that specifying the main axis of elongation of an object does not play an important role in the orientation-sensitive processes involved in identifying planemisoriented views of that object.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Corballis, M. C. (1988). Recognition of misoriented shapes.Psychological Review,95, 115–123.
Corballis, M. C., Zbrodoff, N. J., Shetzer, L. I., &Butler, P. B. (1978). Decisions about identity and orientation of rotated letters and digits.Memory & Cognition,6, 98–107.
De Caro, S. A. (1998). On the perception of objects and their orientations.Spatial Vision,11, 385–400.
De Caro, S. A., &Reeves, A. (2000). Rotating objects to determine orientation, not identity: Evidence from a backward-masking/dualtask procedure.Perception & Psychophysics,62, 1356–1366.
De Caro, S. A., &Reeves, A. (2002). The use of word-picture verification to study entry-level object recognition: Further support for view-invariant mechanisms.Memory & Cognition,30, 811–821.
Dell’ Acqua, R., &Job, R. (1998). Is object recognition automatic?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,5, 496–503.
Dell’ Acqua, R., Job, R., &Grainger, J. (2001). Is global shape sufficient for automatic object identification?Visual Cognition,8, 801–821.
Gauthier, I., &Tarr, M. J. (1997). Orientation priming of novel shapes in the context of viewpoint-dependent recognition.Perception,26, 51–73.
Hamm, J. P., &McMullen, P. A. (1998). Effects of orientation on the identification of rotated objects depend on the level of identity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,24, 413–426.
Jolicäur, P. (1985). The time to name disoriented natural objects.Memory & Cognition,13, 289–303.
Jolicäur, P. (1990). Identification of misoriented objects: A dual systems theory.Mind & Language,5, 387–410.
Jolicäur, P., Corballis, M. C., &Lawson, R. (1998). The influence of perceived rotary motion on the recognition of rotated objects.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,5, 140–146.
Jolicäur, P., &Milliken, B. (1989). Identification of disoriented objects: Effects of context of prior presentation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 200–210.
Lawson, R. (1999). Achieving visual object constancy across plane rotation and depth rotation.Acta Psychologica,102, 221–245.
Lawson, R., &Jolicäur, P. (1998). The effects of plane rotation on the recognition of brief masked pictures of familiar objects.Memory & Cognition,26, 791–803.
Lawson, R., &Jolicäur, P. (1999). The effect of prior experience on recognition thresholds for plane-disoriented pictures of familiar objects.Memory & Cognition,27, 751–758.
Lawson, R., &Jolicäur, P. (2003). Effects of visual similarity on recognition thresholds for plane-misoriented pictures of familiar objects.Acta Psychologica,112, 17–41.
Marr, D. (1982).Vision. San Francisco: Freeman.
McMullen, P. A., Hamm, J., &Jolicäur, P. (1995). Rotated object identification with and without orientation cues.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology,49, 133–149.
Murray, J. E. (1998). Is entry-level recognition viewpoint invariant or viewpoint dependent?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,5, 300–304.
Sanocki, T. (1999). Constructing structural descriptions.Visual Cognition,6, 299–318.
Sekuler, A. B., &Swimmer, M. B. (2000). Interactions between symmetry and elongation in determining reference frames for object perception.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology,54, 42–55.
Snodgrass, J. G., &Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity and visual complexity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,6, 174–215.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by Grant RF&G/2/9900393 from the Leverhulme Trust to the author. The article was written in part while I was on sabbatical at the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Note—This article was accepted by the previous editorial team, headed by Neil Macmillan.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lawson, R. Recognizing a plane-misoriented view of a familiar object is not influenced by the ease of specifying the main axis of elongation of that object. Perception & Psychophysics 66, 234–248 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194875
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194875