Effects of orientation on the identification of rotated objects depend on the level of identity

Matching names and rotated line drawings of objects showed effects of object orientation that depended on name level. Large effects, in the same range as object naming, were found for rotations between 0 degrees and 120 degrees from upright with subordinate names (e.g., collie), whereas nonsignificant effects were found with superordinate (e.g., animal) and basic names (e.g., dog). These results support image normalization, after contact with orientation-invariant representations, that provide basic-level identity. They consequently fail to support theories of object recognition in which rotated object images are normalized to the upright position before contact with long-term object representations.