title: The structure of three-dimensional object representations in human vision: evidence from whole-part matching.
abstract: This article examines how the human visual system represents the shapes of 3-dimensional (3D) objects. One long-standing hypothesis is that object shapes are represented in terms of volumetric component parts and their spatial configuration. This hypothesis is examined in 3 experiments using a whole-part matching paradigm in which participants match object parts to whole novel 3D object shapes. Experiments 1 and 2, consistent with volumetric image segmentation, show that whole-part matching is faster for volumetric component parts than for either open or closed nonvolumetric regions of edge contour. However, the results of Experiment 3 show that an equivalent advantage is found for bounded regions of edge contour that correspond to object surfaces. The results are interpreted in terms of a surface-based model of 3D shape representation, which proposes edge-bounded 2-dimensional polygons as basic primitives of surface shape.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, United Kingdom. e.c.leek@bangor.ac.uk
authors.forename: E Charles
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Leek
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Reppa
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arguin
mesh_terms: D005556:Form Perception; D006801:Humans; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception