Recognition of rotated letters: extracting invariance across successive and simultaneous stimuli.
Response time (RT) for identifying single letters is usually indifferent to disorientation, but in Experiment 1 RT increased with the angular deviation from that of the preceding letter (ADP). This occurs only when the same letter is repeated, which suggests a process of backward alignment. RT again increased with ADP when the same letter was repeated in the same format (normal or mirror-reflected: Experiment 2). These findings were replicated for a same-different task by using 2 simultaneously presented letters (Experiment 3). Experiments 4 and 5 focused on stimuli that are related by a rotation in depth and suggested that transformation in the depth plane may facilitate judgments of sameness and that backward alignment can occur for different views of the same three-dimensional shape. The results suggest the operation of a pattern-recognition mechanism that relies on the extraction of invariance over temporally or spatially contiguous events.
Koriat
A
A
University of Haifa, Israel.
Norman
J
J
Kimchi
R
R
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time