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

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.

Orientation Congruency Effects for Familiar Objects

“…The finding that performance was largely independent of the objects' main axes is consistent with studies suggesting that the axis of elongation is not the main cue for alignment (Large et al, 2003; Lawson, 2004). However, the results do not exclude the possibility that the main axis is one of several cues for object orientation.…”

“…For example, is there still a congruency effect when an object with a vertical axis of elongation is followed by an object with a horizontal axis (e.g., a saltshaker followed by a car)? Recent studies showed that the main axis of elongation has only little or no influence on naming performance (Large, McMullen, & Hamm, 2003; Lawson, 2004). However, this does not necessarily mean that congruency effects are independent of the axis of elongation.…”

A polarity effect in misoriented object recognition: The role of polar features in the computation of orientation-invariant shape representations

“…This is consistent with data from some other studies (e.g., Large et al, 2003;Lawson, 2004;Wilson & Farah, 2003), and places some doubt about the importance of shape axes per se in misoriented object recognition (e.g., Humphreys & Quinlan, 1988;Humphreys & Riddoch, 1984;Quinlan & Humphrey~, 1993). However, further analyses of the current data also showed that an axis of symmetry can be sufficient to attenuate effects of stimulus misorientation: Symmetrical apolar objects showed more shallow regression slopes than asymmetrical objects, consistent with faster spatial normalization.…”

“…First, the results showed an interaction between the effects of stimulus orientation on recognition and the presence or absence of object polar features: Larger orientation effects were found for the apolar than for the polar object set. Second, a contrast in orientation effects between the apolar symmetrical objects used in Experiment 2, and the polar asymmetrical objects used in Experiment 1, suggested that the presence of a salient internal shape axis contributes to the attenuation of orientation effects, contrary to some recent data (Lawson, 2004).…”