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The role of schemas in extrapolating beyond visual boundaries

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Maria S. Orlando^1,2 (morlando@yorku.ca), Syeda Jabeen¹, R. Shayna Rosenbaum^1,2; ¹York University, ²Centre for Vision Research

We sample the world through our vision and can quickly (and automatically) extrapolate beyond what is right in front of us to form a coherent, continuous understanding of a scene. This extrapolation process draws on conceptual knowledge structures or schemas to guide perceptual processing, leading an observer to remember more than what was available from the visual sample of a given scene. Boundary extension (BE) is an error in scene memory, such that participants retrieve details beyond the boundaries of a scene image, thus “extending” the view in their internal representation. Schemas inform expectations about what likely exists beyond the arbitrary boundaries of a scene image, contributing to predictive processing. To test the role of schemas in BE, participants were presented with a set of images in which there is a focal object placed within a scene that is either matched (scene-congruent) or mismatched to the scene context (scene-incongruent). BE was measured with a recognition task in which participants rated whether the view of the test scene image was the same or different than a target scene image. Participants exhibited greater BE for scene-congruent scene images, remembering additional details beyond the boundaries of the original image compared to when the focal object was scene-incongruent. The mismatch between the focal object and surrounding context may disrupt the extrapolation process supported by schemas. These findings show that scene context can influence reconstructive processes necessary for BE.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Vision