Abstract
Individuals consistently remember seeing a more wide-angle version of a previously viewed scene than actually existed. The multi-source model of boundary extension (BE) (Intraub, 2010) suggests many sources of information contribute to this visual memory error (e.g., amodal perception at the view boundaries, semantic information about the scene). The color diagnosticity of an object’s color is known to affect object recognition with poorer recognition for atypically vs. typically colored objects. If atypically colored objects lead to poorer recognition (i.e., reduced availability of semantic information) then, according to the multi-source model, a less precise initial encoding should lead to greater BE. Scenes classified as having high or low color diagnostic objects were used as stimuli. Low color diagnostic stimuli (i.e., color non-diagnostic) and two versions of high color diagnostic scenes were tested. Typical and atypical versions of the high color diagnostic scenes were made by changing the central object’s color only. Scenes were presented for either 46 or 250 ms followed by a mask, and then immediately presented again for test. Observers first identified the central object, then gave a BE rating. As expected, recognition was significantly poorer for atypically colored vs. typically colored and color non-diagnostic scenes at the 46 ms duration, while there were no differences at 250 ms. BE occurred for all conditions. Most importantly, the BE was greatest at 46 ms for scenes with atypically colored objects. This finding suggests the reduced availability of semantic information for this condition lead to a less precise memory representation leading to increased boundary extension. At 250 ms where recognition was similar, semantic information would have been equally available leading to consistent BE ratings across the three types of colored scenes. These findings provide further insight into the role of object recognition and semantic information on boundary extension.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015