The influence of perspective of an inanimate object on the boundary extension phenomena

One of the most compelling phenomena in visual memory is the Boundary Extension (BE) which is the tendency to remember close-up scenes as if they include more information than that was seen. Intraub and Richardson (1989; JEP: LMC), suggested that this phenomenon is due to a filling in process: we fill the scene with information around the boundaries based on our knowledge. For the BE to occur, the scene must be perceived as part of a continuous environment. This project investigated whether the BE can be implicitly affected by the directional information provided by a camera. In the learning phase of a recognition experiment, participants were presented with an image on a computer screen that could have been cropped either to the left or to the right, while a camera could have been positioned either to their left or right. In the testing phase, the image was then presented again, and participants were asked to judge if it was the same. Results showed that the BE magnitude reduces when the camera is in the same side of the cropped images. It is concluded that implicit directional cues can affect our ability to visually memorize images.