Visual representation of malleable and rigid objects that deform as they rotate

Most studies and theories of object recognition have addressed the perception of rigid objects. Yet, physical objects may also move in a nonrigid manner. A series of priming studies examined the conditions under which observers can recognize novel views of objects moving nonrigidly. Observers were primed with 2 views of a rotating object that were linked by apparent motion or presented statically. The apparent malleability of the rotating prime object varied such that the object appeared to be either malleable or rigid. Novel deformed views of malleable objects were primed when falling within the object's motion path. Priming patterns were significantly more restricted for deformed views of rigid objects. These results suggest that moving malleable objects may be represented as continuous events, whereas rigid objects may not. That is, object representations may be "dynamically remapped" during the analysis of the object's motion.