Surface construal and the mental representation of scenes.

Full Abstract

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.

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Author information

Author/s: Gottesman, Carmela V (CV); Intraub, Helene (H);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark 19716, USA. cvgottesman@ou.edu

Grants: MH54688-01A1 (Agency:United States NIMH)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jun; vol 28 (issue 3) : pp 589-99

Dates: Created 2002/06/21; Completed 2003/01/10; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 12075890, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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