EFFECTS OF PERCEIVING AND IMAGINING SCENES ON MEMORY FOR PICTURES

Boundary extension is the tendency to remember having seen a greater e xpanse of a scene than was shown. Four experiments tested whether a pi cture must depict a partial view of a scene for the distortion to occu r. The premise was that partial views activate a perceptual schema, a representation of the expected scene structure outside the view. Parti cipants were 473 undergraduates. Experiments 1 and 2 tested recognitio n memory and recall of 16 outline-objects presented in outline-scenes versus presentation on blank backgrounds. Experiments 3 and 4 compared memory for outline-objects when scene context was or was not imagined . Boundary errors consistent with the perceptual schema hypothesis onl y occurred for partial views (perceived or imagined). Results suggest that scene perception and imagination activate the same schematic repr esentation.