The effects of the target orientation on displacement in memory for the location of a moving rectangular or square target were measured. The orientation of a target relative to its path of motion was varied; the effects of target orientation on forward displacement were observed for the rectangular target and not for the square target. The data were consistent with the hypotheses that the effects of target orientation (a) can be observed in targets that do not have a clearly defined direction of pointing or prototypical orientation relative to their direction of motion, and (b) can influence the forward displacement when the spatial coordinates of the contours of the target are not invariant across changes in target orientation relative to the direction of motion.
Orientation; retangular target; square target; allocation