TARR This object databank is intended as a collaborative project among experimental psychologists to develop a set of standardized stimulus materials depicting familiar common objects. The ultimate goal of the project is to make available to the research community a set of 300-500 photorealistically illuminated and shaded objects. Each object will be developed using 3-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) modeling techniques and will be rendered using state-of-the-art raytracing. A given object will be available in several standard formats for researchers to use in generating their own stimulus images without the need of duplicating the time-intensive modeling required for even a single object. To facilitate researchers who need only high quality images but not specific control of lighting, textures and colors, objects will also be available as collections of already rendered images, each object depicted in realistic colors at a minimum of 12 3-dimensional viewpoints generated by 30 degree rotations around the vertical axis. The set of objects will initially be based on the widely used set of 2-dimensional line drawings of objects introduced and distributed by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980). This set of familiar common objects has been used in many different experimental settings and has provided ease of stimulus preparation and some stimulus standardization between differing research paradigms. The goal is to begin by creating 3-dimensional analogs of each item in the Snodgrass and Vanderwart set -- this provides the added advantage of offering some previously collected norm data about object categories, as well as some basis for comparison with earlier studies. To illustrate some of the many potential applications of this new set of objects, several proposed experiments are included from the areas of object perception , visual memory, scene recognition, neuropsychology of object recognition, neuropsychology of memory, clinical assessment of attentional disorders. Many of the proposed st udies would be impossible without realistic images of common objects. It is expected that the stimulus set will have far wider applications than even this broad range of disciplines, the common theme being that highly realistic visual stimuli can only enhance the ecological relevance of current paradigms, as well as make available new paradigms that were previously unrealizable. ***
