View combination in moving objects: The role of motion in discriminating between novel views of similar and distinctive objects by humans and pigeons

Humans and pigeons were trained to discriminate between views of similar and distinctive objects that rotated in depth coherently or non-coherently. We tested novel views that were either moving or static and were either between the training viewpoints or beyond them. With both types of motion, both species recognized views between the training viewpoints better than views beyond this range. Additionally, for humans, and to some extent for pigeons, when similar objects were learned via coherent motion, dynamic cues facilitated recognition of viewpoints predictable from the direction of motion. Overall, the results suggest that dynamic information may be added to object representations for both species.