VIEW SPECIFICITY IN OBJECT PROCESSING - EVIDENCE FROM PICTURE MATCHING

Four experiments investigated the types of representations mediating s equential visual matching of objects depicted at different depth rotat ions. Matching performance was affected by the similarity between depi cted views of the objects. Effects of view similarity were not influen ced by the presence of a meaningless mask in the interstimulus interva l (ISI), but they were reduced by long ISIs and by familiarity with th e stimuli. It is suggested that with longer ISIs or increased stimulus familiarity, a number of object representations are activated that, a lthough abstracted from some image characteristics, remain view specif ic. Under these conditions, matching is less reliant on representation s closely tied to the view of the initial stimulus presented. The resu lts are consistent with both the derivation and the long-term represen tation of view-specific rather than view-invariant descriptions of obj ects.