Searching for Objects in the Visual Periphery: Effects of Orientation

Previous studies have found that the recognition of familiar objects is dependent on the orientation of the object in the picture plane. Here the time taken to locate rotated objects in the periphery was examined. Eye movements were also recorded. In all experiments, familiar objects were arranged in a clock face display.

In experiment 1, subjects were instructed to locate a match to a central, upright object from amongst a set of randomly rotated objects. The target object was rotated in the frontoparallel plane. Search performance was dependent on rotation, yielding the classic ‘M’ function found in recognition tasks. When matching a single object in periphery, match times were dependent on the angular deviations between the central and target objects and showed no advantage for the upright (experiment 2). In experiment 3 the central object was shown in either the upright rotation or rotated by 120° from the upright. The target object was similarly rotated given four different match conditions. Distractor objects were aligned with the target object. Search times were faster when the centre and target object were aligned and also when the centre object was rotated and the target was upright. Search times were slower when matching a central upright object to a rotated target object. These results suggest that in simple tasks matching is based on image characteristics. However, in complex search tasks a contribution from the object's representation is made which gives an advantage to the canonical, upright view in peripheral vision.