Current theories of object recognition in human vision make different predictions about whether the recognition of complex, multipart objects should be influenced by shape information about surface depth orientation and curvature derived from stereo disparity. We examined this issue in five experiments using a recognition memory paradigm in which observers (N = 134) memorized and then discriminated sets of 3D novel objects at trained and untrained viewpoints under either mono or stereo viewing conditions. In order to explore the conditions under which stereo-defined shape information contributes to object recognition we systematically varied the difficulty of view generalization by increasing the angular disparity between trained and untrained views. In one series of experiments, objects were presented from either previously trained views or untrained views rotated (15°, 30°, or 60°) along the same plane. In separate experiments we examined whether view generalization effects interacted with the vertical or horizontal plane of object rotation across 40° viewpoint changes. The results showed robust viewpoint-dependent performance costs: Observers were more efficient in recognizing learned objects from trained than from untrained views, and recognition was worse for extrapolated than for interpolated untrained views. We also found that performance was enhanced by stereo viewing but only at larger angular disparities between trained and untrained views. These findings show that object recognition is not based solely on 2D image information but that it can be facilitated by shape information derived from stereo disparity.
This study investigated whether, and under what conditions, stored shape representations mediating recognition encode extrinsic object properties of sensory input that vary according to viewing conditions. This was examined in relation to cast shadow. Observers (N=90) first memorised a subset of 3D multi-part novel objects from a limited range of viewpoints rendered with either no shadow, object internal shadow, or both object internal and external (ground) plane shadow. During a subsequent test phase previously memorised targets were discriminated from visually similar distractors across learned and novel views following brief presentation of a same-shape masked prime. The primes contained either matching or mismatching shadow rendering from the training condition. The results showed a recognition advantage for objects memorised with object internal shadow. In addition, objects encoded with internal shadow were primed more strongly by matching internal shadow primes, than by same shape primes with either no shadow or both object internal and external (ground) shadow.This pattern of priming effects generalised to previously unseen views of targets rendered with object internal shadow. The results suggest that the object recognition system contains a level of stored representation at which shape and extrinsic properties of sensory input can be conjointly encoded. Here, this is shown by the conjoint encoding of shape and object internal shadow. We propose that this occurs when cast shadow cannot be discounted during perception on the basis of external cues to the scene lighting model.
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