title: The effects of different aperture-viewing conditions on the recognition of novel objects.
abstract: The process of learning the structure of novel objects involves the selective use of information available in the distal stimulus. By allowing participants to explore the object within a limited field of view, we were able to examine more rigorously what regions of the object are actually selected in the learning process. Participants explored objects either by moving a circular aperture over a stationary novel object (the aperture-movement condition), or by moving the object behind a stationary aperture (the object-movement condition). Given the differences in how the spatial layout of object parts is revealed in the two study conditions, we expected that exploration would be more systematic in the aperture-movement condition than it would be in the object-movement condition, and would lead to better object recognition. We show evidence that in the aperture-movement condition exploration patterns were more related to the structure of the object and, as a consequence, the aperture-movement condition resulted in more accurate recognition in a later old--new discrimination test.
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience Program, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada.
authors.forename: Grzegorz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Króliczak
authors.forename: Melvyn A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Goodale
authors.forename: G Keith
authors.initials: GK
authors.lastname: Humphrey
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011601:Psychophysics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*