Learning scenes from multiple views: novel views can be recognized more efficiently than learned views
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 26, 2026

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras
Published on: October 5, 2018
David Waller1, Alinda Friedman, Eric Hodgson
1Depaertment od Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056, USA. wallerda@muohio.edu
Abstract:
In two experiments, participants were trained to recognize a playground scene from four vantage points and were subsequently asked to recognize the playground from a novel perspective between the four learned viewing perspectives, as well as from the trained perspectives. In both experiments, people recognized the novel view more efficiently than those that they had recently used in order to learn the scene. Additionally, in Experiment 2, participants who viewed a novel stimulus on their very first test trial correctly recognized it more quickly (and also tended to recognize it more accurately) than did participants whose first test trial was a familiar view of the scene. These findings call into question the idea that scenes are recognized by comparing them with single previous experiences, and support a growing body of literature on the existence of psychological mechanisms that combine spatial information from multiple views of a scene.
Related Concept Videos
Observational Learning
Introduction to Learning
In contrast to learned behaviors, unlearned behaviors such as crying, sexual...
Associative Learning
Classical conditioning, also known...
Cognitive Learning
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
Purposive Learning
Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness
Avoidance learning occurs when an organism learns that a specific behavior can prevent an unpleasant outcome. For example, a student who receives a bad grade may start studying harder to avoid future poor grades. This behavior persists even when the negative outcome is no longer present. Avoidance learning is powerful because it maintains behavior in the absence of the...