Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Behavioral, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological studies have shown that certain aspects of object knowledge (e.g., theobjects function or mode of manipulation) can be accessed independently of more abstract properties (e.g., the objectsname) and faster when participants are presented with three-dimensional relative to two-dimensional objects. Here weexamined whether visual and manual exposure to three-dimensional objects, relative to two-dimensional pictures of theseobjects, would allow for differential access to semantic memory under conditions of impromptu relative to canonical goalachievement (i.e., when a participant has to come up with an unusual, relative to a typical, use for a common object).Our results showed that the combination of visual and manual exposure to three-dimensional objects interfered with thegeneration of uncommon uses, liked due to the facilitated access to sensorimotor object properties associated with theobjects canonical use. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of object knowledge retrieval.