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Abstract

Three experiments provide evidence that the
perceived similarity between two images is systematically
affected by the inherent direction of a transformation that
links the two. Participants were shown short animations
morphing one object into another from the same basic
category. They were then asked to make directional similarity
judgments (‘‘How similar is object A to object B?’’)
for two stationary images drawn from the morph continuum.
Across three experiments, similarity ratings for
identical comparisons were higher when the reference
object, B, had appeared before the comparison object, A,
in the preceding morph sequence. This response to dynamic
transformational sequences is in accordance with
the view that similarity depends on the ease of transformation
between object representations and that transformations
between objects in categorization and object
recognition are psychologically real.