Modulation of viewpoint effects in object recognition by shape and motion cues

In three experiments, we examined the role of structural similarity and different types of motion on the efficiency of performing same-different shape judgments across changes in viewpoints. In all experiments, participants judged whether two novel, multi-part objects were structurally identical, and they were to ignore any viewpoint or motion differences between the objects. In experiment 1, participants were affected by viewpoint differences more for structurally similar than structurally distinct objects, but this interaction was mitigated by rigid motion. In experiments 2 and 3, we used only structurally similar objects that moved only some of their parts, either in a similar way between objects within a pair or in distinctive ways. Participants' recognition performance was facilitated by this articulated motion relative to both static and scrambled controls. We conclude that coherent motion facilitates generalisation across different views of dynamic objects under some conditions.