Surface construal and the mental representation of scenes.
What distinguishes scenes from nonscenes? Photographs of objects on both naturalistic and blank backgrounds yielded boundary extension (BE: memory for unseen spatial expanse outside the picture's boundaries). However, line-drawn objects on blank backgrounds did not (Experiment 1). Perhaps the blank background was construed as depicting a real-world surface in the photograph condition but was construed as depicting nothing in the line-drawn condition. To change background construal, the authors used objects cut out of photographs; these were placed on blank backgrounds while viewers watched (Experiments 2 and 3). BE was eliminated. The authors propose that amodal continuation is a fundamental aspect of scene perception. However, not all pictures are scenes--only pictures construed as depicting a truncated view of a continuous world.
Gottesman
Carmela V
CV
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark 19716, USA. cvgottesman@ou.edu
Intraub
Helene
H
D000328:Adult; D003867:Depth Perception; D004215:Distance Perception; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D012858:Size Perception