Representation of rotated objects in explicit and implicit memory

The effects of rotating familiar and novel objects in depth between study and test were explored on short-term recognition, long-term recognition, and priming tasks. Short-term recognition memory was not affected by rotation in depth when the study and test views shared the same visible parts. However, long-term recognition was sensitive to rotation, even when all the parts were visible in both views. Priming was also affected by rotation, but only when study and test views did not share the same parts, or when test views were generated from rotations greater than 67 degrees. Together, the results suggest that long-term recognition memory is mediated by representations that specify viewpoint in depth precisely, whereas priming is mediated by representations that are more broadly tuned with respect to orientation. Furthermore, the insensitivity of the short-term recognition memory task to rotation suggests the possibility that viewpoint-invariant descriptions are generated from multiple successive views.