View specificity in object processing: Evidence from picture matching

Four experiments investigated the types of representations mediating sequential visual matching of objects depicted at different depth rotations. Matching performance was affected by the similarity between depicted views of the objects. Effects of view similarity were not influenced by the presence of a meaningless mask in the interstimulus interval (ISI), but they were reduced by long ISIs and by familiarity with the stimuli. It is suggested that with longer ISIs or increased stimulus familiarity, a number of object representations are activated that, although abstracted from some image characteristics, remain view specific. Under these conditions, matching is less reliant on representations closely tied to the view of the initial stimulus presented. The results are consistent with both the derivation and the long-term representation of view-specific rather than view-invariant descriptions of objects.