The Spatial Representation of Natural Scenes

A scene is never perceived in its entirety. The input for scene comprehension is always a partial view. Whether looking at a picture or scanning the visual environment, the observer is faced with partial views. An Extension-Normalization Model is offered to account for the ability to perceive scenes based on partial information. The model, proposes an extrapolation process that occurs during perception and then influences spatial memory-- yielding a memory distortion referred to as "boundary extension " 0ntraub & Richardson, 1989). Research testing the implications of the model for spatial memory, imagination, and the integration of eye movements during visual scanning will be discussed. "Boundary extension " refers to the viewer’s tendency to remember seeing information that was not in a photograph of a scene, but that was likely to have existed just outside the camera’s field of view (intraub Richardson, 1989). This distortion of the remembered picture-space is evident in subjects ’ drawings of previously presented scenes. They tend to depict a more wide-angle view of the scene than was actually shown in the photograph, reducing the size of main objects and extending the background accordingly (Intrau