Abstract
This article investigates how the perspective from which we see an object affects memory. Object identification can be affected by the orientation of the object. Palmer, Rosch, and Chase (1981) coined the term canonical to describe perspectives in which identification performance is best. We present two experiments that tested the effects of object perspective on memory. Our results revealed a double dissociation between task (recognition and recall) and type of object perspective. In recognition, items studied in the noncanonical viewpoint produced higher proportions of “old” responses than did items studied in the canonical viewpoint, whereas new objects presented from a noncanonical viewpoint produced fewer “old” responses than did new objects presented from the canonical viewpoint. In free recall, conversely, objects studied from the noncanonical viewpoint produced lower recall rates than did objects studied from the canonical viewpoint. These results, which reveal a pattern similar to word frequency effects, support the psychological reality of canonical viewpoints and the frequencyof-exposure-based accounts of canonical viewpoint effects. 2008 Psychonomic Society, Inc
Article PDF
References
Biederman, I. (1987). Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding. Psychological Review, 94, 115–147.
Blanz, V., Tarr, M. J., & Bülthoff, H. H. (1999). What object attributes determine canonical views? Perception, 28, 575–599.
Criss, A. H., & Shiffrin, R. M. (2004). Interactions between study task, study time, and the low-frequency hit rate advantage in recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 30, 778–786.
Edelman, S., & Bülthoff, H. H. (1992). Orientation dependence in the recognition of familiar and novel views of three-dimensional objects. Vision Research, 32, 2385–2400.
Gillund, G., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1984). A retrieval model for both recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 91, 1–67.
Glanzer, M., & Adams, J. K. (1985). The mirror effect in recognition memory. Memory & Cognition, 13, 8–20.
Glanzer, M., & Bowles, N. (1976). Analysis of the word-frequency effect in recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory, 2, 21–31.
Grossberg, S., & Stone, G. (1986). Neural dynamics of word recognition and recall: Attentional priming, learning, and resonance. Psychological Review, 93, 46–74.
Hall, J. F. (1954). Learning as a function of word frequency. American Journal of Psychology, 67, 138–140.
Hockley, W. E. (1994). Reflections of the mirror effect for item and associative recognition. Memory & Cognition, 22, 713–722.
Jacoby, L. L., & Dallas, M. (1981). On the relationship between autobiographical memory and perceptual learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110, 306–340.
Jolicoeur, P. (1985). The time to name disoriented natural objects. Memory & Cognition, 13, 289–303.
Karlsen, P. J., & Snodgrass, J. G. (2004). The word-frequency paradox for recall/recognition occurs for pictures. Psychological Research, 68, 271–276.
Karnath, H.-O., Ferber, S., & Bülthoff, H. H. (2000). Neuronal representation of object recognition. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1235–1241.
Malmberg, K. J., & Nelson, T. O. (2003). The word frequency effect for recognition memory and the elevated-attention hypothesis. Memory & Cognition, 31, 35–43.
Palmer, S. E., Rosch, E., & Chase, P. (1981). Canonical perspective and the perception of objects. In J. Long & A. Baddeley (Eds.), Attention and performance IX (pp. 135–151). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Peters, H. N. (1936). The relationship between familiarity of words and their memory value. American Journal of Psychology, 48, 572–584.
Rouder, J. N., Ratcliff, R., & McKoon, G. (2000). A neural network model of implicit memory in object recognition. Psychological Science, 11, 13–19.
Scarborough, D. L., Cortese, C., & Scarborough, H. S. (1977). Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 3, 1–17.
Shepard, R. N. (1967). Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 6, 156–163.
Shiffrin, R. M., & Steyvers, M. (1997). A model for recognition memory: REM-retrieving effectively from memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 145–166.
Tarr, M. J., & Bülthoff, H. H. (1995). Is human object recognition better described by geon structural descriptions or by multiple views? Comment on Biederman and Gerhardstein (1993). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 21, 1494–1505.
Tarr, M. J., & Pinker, S. (1989). Mental rotation and orientationdependence in shape recognition. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 233–282.
Underwood, B. J., Ekstrand, B. R., & Keppel, G. (1965). An analysis of intralist similarity in verbal learning with experiments on conceptual similarity. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 4, 447–462.
Underwood, B. J., & Freund, J. S. (1970). Testing effects in the recognition of words. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 9, 117–125.
Verfaillie, K., & Boutsen, L. (1995). A corpus of 714 full-color images of depth-rotated objects. Perception & Psychophysics, 57, 925–961.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant SES-0446869 to P.G., and NSF Grant SES-0351523 and NIMH Grant R01-MH071418 to J.N.R.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gomez, P., Shutter, J. & Rouder, J.N. Memory for objects in canonical and noncanonical viewpoints. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 940–944 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.5.940
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.5.940