H. Intraub et Jl. Bodamer, BOUNDARY EXTENSION - FUNDAMENTAL ASPECT OF PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OR ENCODING ARTIFACT, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 19(6), 1993, pp. 1387-1397
Viewers remember seeing more of a scene than was actually depicted in
a photograph, a phenomenon called boundary extension (H. Intraub & M.
Richardson, 1989). We tested whether prior warning would eliminate thi
s distortion, by having 81 Ss view 12 photographs of simple scenes for
15 s each after receiving 1 of 3 encoding instructions. All subjects
were told to remember each picture in detail. Control Ss received no a
dditional information. Test-informed Ss received prior warning about t
he type of tests. Demo Ss experienced a demonstration of the phenomeno
n and were instructed to guard against it. After presentation, a drawi
ng task and a boundary recognition test were administered. Prior warni
ng sometimes reduced, but never eliminated, boundary extension. We sug
gest the phenomenon reflects activation of scene expectations during p
erception.