Object categorisation, object naming, and viewpoint independence in visual remembering: evidence from young children's drawings of a novel object.

Full Abstract

A simple object-drawing task confirms a three-way association between object categorisation, viewpoint independence, and longer-term visual remembering. Young children (5- to 7-year-olds) drew a familiar object or a novel object, immediately after it had been hidden from view or on the following day. Both objects were shown from a full range of viewpoints or from just two viewpoints, from neither of which would either object normally be drawn after unrestricted viewing. When drawing from short-term memory after restricted viewing, both objects were most likely to be depicted from a seen viewpoint. When drawing from longer-term memory after restricted viewing, the novel object continued to be drawn from a seen viewpoint, but the mug was now most likely to be drawn from a preferred viewpoint from which it had not been seen. Naming the novel object with a novel count noun ("Look at this. This is a dax"), to signal that it belonged to an object category, resulted in it being drawn in the same way as the familiar object. The results concur with other evidence indicating that short-term and longer-term visual remembering are differentially associated with viewpoint-dependent representations of individual objects and viewpoint independent representations of object categories, respectively.

Author information

Author/s: Walker, Peter (P); Gavin Bremner, J (J); Smart, Laura (L); Pitt, Tracy (T); Apsey, Denise (D);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, UK. P.Walker(-atsign-)lancaster.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Memory (Hove, England) (Memory), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-; vol 16 (issue 6) : pp 626-36

Dates: Created 2008/06/23; Completed 2008/11/10;

PMID: 18569689, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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