Detection of three types of changes to novel objects

In this study a change-detection paradigm is used to explore the nature of the information used to recognize three-dimensional, novel objects. In particular, whether we are sensitive to changes in part identity or configuration information. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that configural changes made to the object parts were significantly easier and quicker to detect than changes made to the shape or arrangement of object parts. Variance due to the total change in pixels did not predict performance in either of the experiments. The results of Experiment 3 showed the same pattern as Experiments 1 and 2, even though the objects used were altered to make part identity information more salient. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the physical size of the changes is not the crucial variable for this pattern of results. These findings are discussed in relation to the nature of visual representations and theories of object recognition.