More than meets the eye: the effect of planned fixations on scene representation.
Scene memory frequently includes a swath of unseen layout beyond a photograph's boundaries (boundary extension [BE]; Intraub and Richardson, 1989). Might it be affected by the viewer's plan to shift fixation near a view boundary? When photographs were centrally fixated (500 msec), BE occurred following a 2-sec masked interval (Experiment 1). In Experiments 2-4, a cue during the first fixation signaled viewers to fixate an object near the left or right boundary. The picture was masked before the eyes landed. BE occurred on the cued side and on the top and bottom, but not on the uncued side. This relatively accurate performance on the uncued side suggests that inhibition of a movement to one side (in a competitive task) may also inhibit extrapolation of layout. BE on the to-be-fixated side, however, supports the idea that anticipatory representation of layout is an adaptive error that may aid the spatial integration of successive views.
Intraub
Helene
H
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA. intraub@udel.edu
Hoffman
James E
JE
Wetherhold
C Jeffrey
CJ
Stoehs
Stacy-Ann
SA
D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012438:Saccades; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception