Promoting rotational-invariance in object recognition despite experience with only a single view.pdfVIP

Behavioural Processes 123 (2016) 107–113 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Behavioural Processes journal homepage: /locate/behavproc Promoting rotational-invariance in object recognition despite experience with only a single view Fabian A. Soto a,?, Edward A. Wasserman b a Department of Psychology, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA b Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA article info Article history: Received 17 July 2015 Received in revised form 3 November 2015 Accepted 4 November 2015 Available online 28 November 2015 Keywords: Object recognition View invariance Learning Evolution of visual cognition abstract Different processes are assumed to underlie invariant object recognition across af?ne transformations, such as changes in size, and non-af?ne transformations, such as rotations in depth. From this perspec- tive, promoting invariant object recognition across rotations in depth requires visual experience with the object from multiple viewpoints. One learning mechanism potentially contributing to invariant recogni- tion is the error-driven learning of associations between relatively view-invariant visual properties and motor responses or object labels. This account uniquely predicts that experience with af?ne transfor- mations of a single object view may also promote view-invariance, if view-invariant properties are also invariant across such af?ne transformations. We empirically con?rmed this prediction in both people and pigeons, thereby suggesting that: (a) the hypothesized mechanism participates in view-invariance learn- ing, (b) this mechanism is present across distantly-related vertebrates, and (c) the distinction between af?ne and non-af?ne transformations may not be fundamental for biological visual systems, as previously assumed. ? 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Keen interest exists in discovering how organisms achieve object recognition that is