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No symmetry advantage when object matching involves accidental viewpoints

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Abstract

The presupposed advantage of symmetrical objects over asymmetrical objects was investigated in an object matching task, using accidental and non-accidental viewpoints. In addition, the accidental views could be symmetric or asymmetric. When two non-accidental views were presented, symmetrical objects were matched faster than asymmetrical objects. When an accidental view was presented first (followed by a non-accidental view), the matching of symmetrical objects was equal to that of asymmetrical objects. When a non-accidental view was presented first (followed by an accidental view), matching was again equal for the symmetrical and asymmetrical objects, although much faster compared with the opposite sequence of presented views. No effects of image symmetry in the accidental viewpoints were found. Apparently, the advantage of symmetrical objects over asymmetrical objects is only present in object matching when 3-D object structures are visible.

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Notes

  1. It has been argued that there is a preferred, or canonical, view for the recognition of objects (Palmer, Rosche, & Chase, 1981). Palmer et al. define an object’s canonical view as “the view that reveals the most information of greatest salience about it.” However, although a person may have a strong intuition as to what the canonical view might be for any given object, this cannot be easily generalized across objects. In the study by Palmer et al., most objects were preferably viewed from slightly above, with both the front and the side of the objects clearly visible. Similar results were found by Verfaillie and Boutsen (1995). Even though the canonical views used here might not be the best possible views of the objects, the term C-view is used to contrast it with the term A-view

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted at the Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information. Rob van Lier received a grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The authors would like to thank three anonymous reviewers, as well as Peter van der Helm and Tessa de Wit for their helpful comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this paper.

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  1. NICI, University of Nijmegen, PO Box 9104, 6500, HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Arno Koning

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  1. Arno Koning
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  2. Rob van Lier
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Correspondence to Arno Koning.

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Koning, A., van Lier, R. No symmetry advantage when object matching involves accidental viewpoints. Psychological Research 70, 52–58 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0191-8

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