2002/01/01 by Carmela Gottesman, Helene Intraub · 8 citations
Computer Science · Neuroscience · #Visual Attention and Saliency Detection #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #Face Recognition and Perception
paper · doi:10.1037//0096-1523.28.3.589
openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/24
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.