The bare bones of object recognition: implications from a case of object recognition impairment

Three experiments were designed to investigate the performance of a patient (RK) who could name objects when presented in conventional views but showed catastrophic failures in identification from unconventional views. The aim of all three experiments was to assess the properties of the central repr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychologia 1999-03, Vol.37 (3), p.279-292
Main Authors: Davidoff, J, Warrington, E.K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Aged
Biological and medical sciences
Cerebral Cortex - blood supply
Cerebral Cortex - pathology
Cerebrovascular Disorders - complications
Cerebrovascular Disorders - psychology
Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes
Humans
Language
Male
Medical sciences
Memory
Memory Disorders - psychology
Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes)
Neurology
Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Visual Perception
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Summary:Three experiments were designed to investigate the performance of a patient (RK) who could name objects when presented in conventional views but showed catastrophic failures in identification from unconventional views. The aim of all three experiments was to assess the properties of the central representations that allow recognition of objects presented in conventional but not unconventional views. All three experiments showed that RK had problems in object identification not apparent from his naming performance. In the first experiment, RK was found to be extremely impaired at recognising the parts of objects even though he could name the whole object. In the second experiment, alterations in colour, shape and parts of objects were undetected in stimuli that he could name. In the third experiment, RK showed considerable difficulty with mirror-images and inversion tasks. The explanation for RKs impaired object recognition could not be attributed to defects to his early visual processing. We argue that RKs recognition is achieved through abstract (object-centred) representations that are global rather than local, and quite independent of their spatial framework. These abstract representations we take to be the essential bare bones for object recognition.
ISSN:0028-3932
1873-3514
DOI:10.1016/S0028-3932(98)00076-1