Perceiving real-world viewpoint changes

Retinal images vary as observers move through the environment, but observers seem to have little difficulty recognizing objects and scenes across changes in view. Although real-world view changes can be produced both by object rotations (orientation changes) and by observer movements (viewpoint changes), research on recognition across views has relied exclusively on display rotations. However, research on spatial reasoning suggests a possible dissociation between orientation and viewpoint. Hel-e we demonstrate that scene recognition in the real world depends on mol-e than the retinal projection of the visible array; viewpoint changes have little effect on detection of layout changes, bur equivalent orientation changes disrupt performance significantly. Findings Si-om our three experiments suggest that scene recognition across view changes relies on a mechanism that updates a viewer-centered representation during observer movements, a mechanism not available Sor orientation changes. These results link findings SI-om spatial tasks to work on object and scene recognition and highlight rite importance of considering the mechanisms underlying recognition? in real environments.