A group-theoretic analysis of mental space isometries in form recognition (Q689453)

This paper reports on experiments on the discrimination of three- dimensional forms. More specifically, the subjects were asked to determine whether two isometric shapes could be rotated into one another. The findings confirm earlier work in the area that suggest that each normal subgroup of the group of isometries of three-space determines a particular frame for describing the shape. A major conclusion of the paper is that the ``internal model'' embodies important structural features of the three-dimensional object that are not manifest in the two-dimensional projections on the retina.