Coincident Orientation of Objects and Viewpoint-Dependence in Scene Recognition

Abstract

Viewpoint-dependence is a well-known phenomenon in which participants' spatial memory is better for previously experienced points of view than for novel ones. In the current study, partial-scene-recognition was used to examine the effect of coincident orientation of all the objects on viewpoint-dependence in spatial memory. When objects in scenes had no clear orientations (e.g., balls), participants' recognition of experienced directions was better than that of novel ones, indicating that there was viewpoint-dependence. However, when the objects in scenes were toy bears with clear orientations, the coincident orientation of objects (315°), which was not experienced, shared the advantage of the experienced direction (0°), and participants were equally likely to choose either direction when reconstructing the spatial representation in memory. These findings suggest that coincident orientation of objects may affect egocentric representations in spatial memory.