Abstract
Successful object recognition is essential for finding food, identifying kin, and avoiding danger, as well as many other adaptive behaviors. To accomplish this feat, the visual system must reconstruct 3-D interpretations from 2-D “snapshots” falling on the retina. Theories of recognition address this process by focusing on the question of how object representations are encoded with respect to viewpoint. Although empirical evidence has been equivocal on this question, a growing body of surprising results, including those obtained in the experiments presented in this case study, indicates that recognition is often viewpoint dependent. Such findings reveal a prominent role for viewpointdependent mechanisms and provide support for themultiple-views approach, in which objects are encoded as a set of view-specific representations that are matched to percepts using normalization procedures.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bartram, D. J. (1974). The role of visual and semantic codes in object naming.Cognitive Psychology,6, 325–356.
Bartram, D. J. (1976). Levels of coding in picture-picture comparison tasks.Memory & Cognition,4, 593–602.
Biederman, I. (1987). Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding.Psychological Review,94, 115–147.
Biederman, I., &Cooper, E. E. (1991). Priming contour-deleted images: Evidence for intermediate representations in visual object recognition.Cognitive Psychology,23, 393–419.
Biederman, I., &Gerhardstein, P. C. (1993). Recognizing depthrotated objects: Evidence and conditions for three-dimensional viewpoint invariance.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,19, 1162–1182.
Biederman, I., &Shiffrar, M. M. (1987). Sexing day-old chicks: A case study and expert systems analysis of a difficult perceptuallearning task.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,13, 640–645.
Bülthoff, H. H., &Edelman, S. (1992). Psychophysical support for a two-dimensional view interpolation theory of object recognition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,89, 60–64.
Bülthoff, H. H., &Edelman, S. (1993). Evaluating object recognition theories by computer graphics psychophysics. In T. A. Poggio & D. A. Glaser (Eds.),Exploring brain functions: Models in neuroscience (pp. 139–164). New York: Wiley.
Carpenter, P. A., &Just, M. A. (1978). Eye fixations during mental rotation. In J. W. Senders, D. F. Fisher, & R. A. Monty (Eds.),Eye movements and the higher psychological functions (pp. 115–133). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cohen, D., &Kubovy, M. (1993). Mental rotation, mental representation, and flat slopes.Cognitive Psychology,25, 351–382.
Cooper, L. A., Schacter, D. L., Ballesteros, S., &Moore, C. (1992). Priming and recognition of transformed three-dimensional objects: Effects of size and reflection.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,18, 43–57.
Cooper, L. A., &Shepard, R. N. (1973). Chronometric studies of the rotation of mental images. In W. G. Chase (Ed.),Visual information processing (pp. 75–176). New York: Academic Press.
Corballis, M. C. (1988). Recognition of disoriented shapes.Psychological Review,95, 115–123.
Corballis, M. C., &Nagourney, B. A. (1978). Latency to categorize disoriented alphanumeric characters as letters or digits.Canadian Journal of Psychology,32, 186–188.
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.
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.
Eley, M. G. (1982). Identifying rotated letter-like symbols.Memory & Cognition,10, 25–32.
Farah, M. J. (1990).Visual agnosia: Disorders of object recognition and what they tell us about normal vision. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Folk, M. D., &Luce, R. D. (1987). Effects of stimulus complexity on mental rotation rate of polygons.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,13, 395–404.
Freeman, H., &Chakravarty, I. (1980). The use of characteristic views in the recognition of three-dimensional objects. In E. S. Gelsema & L. N. Kanal (Eds.),Pattern recognition in practice (pp. 277–288). New York: North-Holland.
Gould, S. J. (1989).Wonderful life. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hinton, G. E., &Parsons, L. M. (1981). Frames of reference and mental imagery. In J. Long & A. Baddeley (Eds.),Attention and performance IX (pp. 261–277). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hintzman, D. L. (1986). “Schema abstraction” in a multiple-trace memory model.Psychological Review,93, 411–428.
Horn, B. K. P., &Brooks, M. J. (1989).Shape from shading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hummel, J. E., &Biederman, I. (1992). Dynamic binding in a neural network for shape recognition.Psychological Review,99, 480–517.
Humphrey, G. K., &Jolicoeur, P. (1993). An examination of the effects of axis foreshortening, monocular depth cues, and visual field on object identification.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,46A, 137–159.
Humphrey, G. K., &Khan, S. C. (1992). Recognizing novel views of three-dimensional objects.Canadian Journal of Psychology,46, 170–190.
Huttenlocher, D. P., &Ullman, S. (1987). Object recognition using alignment. InProceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 102–111). London: IEEE Computer Society Press.
Jolicoeur, P.(1985). The time to name disoriented natural objects.Memory & Cognition,13, 289–303.
Jolicoeur, P. (1988). Mental rotation and the identification of disoriented objects.Canadian Journal of Psychology,42, 461–478.
Jolicoeur, P. (1990a). Identification of disoriented objects: A dualsystems theory.Mind & Language,5, 387–410.
Jolicoeur, P. (1990b). Orientation congruency effects on the identification of disoriented shapes.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,16, 351–364.
Jolicoeur, P., Gluck, M., &Kosslyn, S. M. (1984). Pictures and names: Making the connection.Cognitive Psychology,16, 243–275.
Jolicoeur, P., &Milliken, B. (1989). Identification of disoriented objects: Effects of context of prior presentation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 200–210.
Jolicoeur, P., Regehr, S., Smith, L. B. J. P., &Smith, G. N. (1985). Mental rotation of representations of two-dimensional and threedimensional objects.Canadian Journal of Psychology,39, 100–129.
Kendrick, K. M., &Baldwin, B. A. (1987). Cells in temporal cortex of conscious sheep can respond preferentially to the sight of faces.Science,236, 448–450.
Koenderink, J. J. (1987). An internal representation for solid shape based on the topological properties of the apparent contour. In W. Richards & S. Ullman (Eds.),Image understanding 1985–86 (pp. 257–285). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Koenderink, J. J. (1990).Solid shape. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koenderink, J. J., &van Doorn, A. J. (1979). The internal representation of solid shape with respect to vision.Biological Cybernetics,32, 211–216.
Koriat, A., &Norman, J. (1985). Mental rotation and visual familiarity.Perception & Psychophysics,37, 429–439.
Kriegman, D. J., &Ponce, J. (1990). Computing exact aspect graphs of curved objects: Solids of revolution.International Journal of Computer Vision,5, 119–135.
Lawson, R. (1993).The achievement of visual object constancy: Evidence for view-specific representations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham.
Logothetis, N. K., Pauls, J., Bülthoff, H. H., &Poggio, T. (1994). View-dependent object recognition in monkeys.Current Biology,4, 401–414.
Marr, D., &Nishihara, H. K. (1978). Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three-dimensional shapes.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B,200, 269–294.
McMullen, P. A.,Hamm, J., &Jolicoeur, P. (in press). Rotated object identification with and without orientation cues.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology.
McMullen, P. A., &Jolicoeur, P. (1992). Reference frame and effects of orientation on finding the tops of rotated objects.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,18, 807–820.
Metzler, J., &Shepard, R. N. (1974). Transformational studies of the internal representation of three-dimensional objects. In R. L. Solso (Ed.),Theories of cognitive psychology: The Loyola Symposium (pp. 147–201). Potomac, MD: Erlbaum.
Murray, J. E., Jolicoeur, P., McMullen, P. A., &Ingleton, M. (1993). Orientation-invariant transfer of training in the identification of rotated natural objects.Memory & Cognition,21, 604–610.
Palmer, S., Rosch, E., &Chase, P. (1981). Canonical perspective and the perception of objects. In J. Long & A. Baddeley (Eds.),Attention and performance IX. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Parsons, L. M. (1987a). Imagined spatial transformation of one’s body.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,116, 172–191.
Parsons, L. M. (1987b). Imagined spatial transformations of one’s hands and feet.Cognitive Psychology,19, 178–241.
Parsons, L. M. (1987c). Visual discrimination of abstract mirrorreflected three-dimensional objects at many orientations.Perception & Psychophysics,42, 49–59.
Perrett, D. I., Mistlin, A. J., &Chitty, A. J. (1987). Visual neurones responsive to faces.Trends in Neuroscience,10, 358–364.
Pinker, S. (1984). Visual cognition: An introduction.Cognition,18, 1–63.
Poggio, T., &Edelman, S. (1990). A network that learns to recognize three-dimensional objects.Nature,343, 263–266.
Robertson, L. C., Palmer, S. E., &Gomez, L. M. (1987). Reference frames in mental rotation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,13, 368–379.
Rock, I. (1973).Orientation and form. New York: Academic Press.
Rock, I. (1983).The logic of perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rock, I., &Di Vita, J. (1987). A case of viewer-centered object perception.Cognitive Psychology,19, 280–293.
Rock, I., Di Vita, J., &Barbeito, R. (1981). The effect on form perception of change of orientation in the third dimension.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 719–732.
Rock, I., Wheeler, D., &Tudor, L. (1989).Can we imagine how objects look from other viewpoints?Cognitive Psychology,21, 185–210.
Roediger, H. L., III,Weldon, M. S., &Challis, B. H. (1989). Explaining dissociations between implicit and explicit measures of retention: A processing account. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.),Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 3–42). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Shepard, R. N. (1984). Ecological constraints on internal representation: Resonant kinematics of perceiving, imagining, thinking, and dreaming.Psychological Review,91, 417–447.
Shepard, R. N., &Cooper, L. A. (1982).Mental images and their transformations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shepard, R. N., &Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of threedimensional objects.Science,171, 701–703.
Shepard, S., &Metzler, D. (1988). Mental rotation: Effects of dimensionality of objects and type of task.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,14, 3–11.
Shinar, D., &Owen, D. H. (1973). Effects of form rotation on the speed of classification: The development of shape constancy.Perception & Psychophysics,14, 149–154.
Simion, F., Bagnara, S., Roncato, S., &Umiltà, C. (1982). Transformation processes upon the visual code.Perception & Psychophysics,31, 13–25.
Srinivas, K. (1993). Perceptual specificity in nonverbal priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 582–602.
Tarr, M. J., &Bülthoff, H. H. (in press). Is human object recognition better described by geon-structural-descriptions or by multipleviews?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance.
Tarr, M. J., &Pinker, S. (1989). Mental rotation and orientationdependence in shape recognition.Cognitive Psychology,21, 233–282.
Tarr, M. J., &Pinker, S. (1990). When does human object recognition use a viewer-centered reference frame?Psychological Science,1, 253–256.
Tarr, M. J., &Pinker, S. (1991). Orientation-dependent mechanisms in shape recognition: Further issues.Psychological Science,2, 207–209.
Tversky, B., &Hemenway, K. (1984). Objects, parts, and categories.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,113, 169–193.
Ullman, S. (1989). Aligning pictorial descriptions: An approach to object recognition.Cognition,32, 193–254.
Ullman, S., &Basri, R. (1991). Recognition by linear combinations of models.IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence,13, 992–1006.
Vetter, T., Poggio, T., &Bülthoff, H. H. (1994). The importance of symmetry and virtual views in three-dimensional object recognition.Current Biology,4, 18–23.
White, M. J. (1980). Naming and categorization of tilted alphanumeric characters do not require mental rotation.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,15, 153–156.
White, R. (1989). Visual thinking in the ice age.Scientific American,261, 92–99.
Witkin, A. P., &Tenenbaum, J. M. (1983). On the role of structure in vision. In A. Rosenfeld, B. Hope, & J. Beck (Eds.),Human and machine vision (pp. 481–544). New York: Academic Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the PhD in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Financial support at MIT was provided by the James R. Killian Fellowship sponsored by the James and Lynelle Holden Fund, a Fellowship from the Whitaker Health Sciences Fund, and an NSF Graduate Fellowship. In addition, parts of this research were funded under NSF Grant BNS 8518774 to Steven Pinker, Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, and a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the MIT Center for Cognitive Science. Final revisions were completed during a visit to the Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik in Tübingen. Jigna Desai and Carmita Signes ran many of the subjects and were stellar research assistants. Many thanks to Kyle Cave, Jacob Feldman, Paul Bloom, Larry Maloney, William Hayward, Pierre Jolicoeur, James Pomerantz, two anonymous reviewers, and in particular to my thesis committee members, Irving Biederman, Ellen Hildreth, and David Irwin for their time, insights, and support. Michael Kubovy provided useful comments on an earlier version. Special thanks to Steve Pinker and to Laurie Heller.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tarr, M.J. Rotating objects to recognize them: A case study on the role of viewpoint dependency in the recognition of three-dimensional objects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2, 55–82 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03214412
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03214412