Canonical views of dynamic scenes.

The visual recognition of dynamic scenes was examined. The authors hypothesized that the notion of canonical views, which has received strong empirical support for static objects, also holds for dynamic scenes. In Experiment 1, viewpoints orthogonal to the main axis of movement in the scene were preferred over other viewpoints, whereas viewpoints in line with the main axis were least preferred. Experiment 2 provided no empirical evidence for a recognition advantage of canonical viewpoints when presented during the initial learning phase, but Experiment 3 showed a cognitive advantage for canonical viewpoints if they were presented as test stimuli during the recognition test. Overall, the findings suggest that on a phenomenological level, viewers are consciously aware of such viewpoints, and, on a cognitive level, viewers benefit from canonical viewpoints in terms of recognition accuracy. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.