More than
meets the Eye
Dear Berna,
Last week, I saw a very recent photograph of Ontario beach taken just
the same day. With my two clear eyes (I have 20/20 vision), I saw how expansive
and beautiful the beach was. I remember seeing wooden steps on one side of the beach
carefully laid down to make "beach sidewalks." I also remember seeing
sandcastles of various sizes as well as small boats docked on the shore. With the
very appealing sight, I encouraged my bestfriend to take me to that beach for
us to also see the wonder. Convinced by what I told her I saw in the picture,
she immediately accepted and cancelled her appointments (She is a VERY busy
person!). However, when we got to the beach, we saw a very small and dull
beach. There were no sandcastles and no boats! As we looked at the picture, there
were indeed none of these things! There was just the beach with a lot of footprints
embedded on the sand and a very narrow beach sidewalk at one side. Now my
bestfriend thinks I lied to her and she felt disappointed because she gave up her
appointments for that trip. Nevertheless, I am 100% sure
that I saw all these things in the photograph. What could have caused this?
Love, Elektra
Dear Elektra,
What you have experienced is not
beyond normal. In fact, everyone experiences that -- from young children to
older adults (Gallagher et al., 2005). What happened to you is one remarkable phenomenon
that occurs while we perceive and experience the environment around us. This phenomenon
is called the boundary extension effect in
which an observer inaccurately remembers extended portions of an image he or
she previously viewed which are, in fact, not part of the image (Gallagher et
al., 2005). Most of us do not recognize this effect and we think that what we
remember seeing is what was actually seen by our eyes. In addition to that,
since we know that our memories are reconstructive, we tend to explain this
"extension effect" as one of the reconstructions of our memory without
knowing that there is indeed a tendency for us to experience this. This boundary
extension effect does not only occur in vision. Instead, the phenomenon is also
experienced through other sensory modalities such as tactile stimulations
(Gallagher et al., 2005).
So why does this boundary
extension effect take place? One theory proposed for this is the Scene context hypothesis which assumes
that an observer incorporates his or her expectations from his or her own perceptual
schema with a previously viewed image to build a vision of what occurs beyond
the boundaries. With that, it seems as if observers tend to complete the view
he or she is seeing (Gallagher et al., 2005).
Also in studying what causes this
boundary extension effect, researchers have looked into factors that could
possibly influence the extension effect. First, they considered how the emotional
valence or emotional content of the image influences our tendency to extend
boundaries of images (Gallagher et al., 2005). However, since changing the
emotional valence of the image does not cause difference in the amount of
extension effects, the researchers concluded that possibly, it is the emotional
states of the observers that cause differences in extension effects instead of
the emotional valence of the image itself (Gallagher et al., 2005). In relation
to this, Ménétrier, Didierjean, and Vieillard (2013) conducted a study about
how different emotional states affect boundary extension. The findings in their
study showed that positive emotions such as happiness and pleasure often lead
to extension effects. Negative emotions, on the other hand, did not show
significant effects on boundary extension (Ménétrier, Didierjean, & Vieillard,
2013).
This could be the reason why you
experienced the boundary extension effect. Since you were very excited to see
the beach, your mind was able to picture a view that was beyond what your eyes
saw. My advice to you, Elektra, is to tell your bestfriend about the boundary
extension effect and discuss to her how everyone is susceptible in making their
memories of images beyond what they actually saw. Also tell her that
experiencing this boundary extension effect, even though it is considered as a
false memory or as an error, shows that one is capable of viewing the world
beyond the boundaries set by an image. This then infers that one has a
perceptual schema or a representation of what the world is (Gagnier &
Intraub, 2009).
Senserely
yours,
BernaDETTE
References:
Gagnier,
K.M. & Intraub, H. (2009). Boundary extension. Scholarpedia, 4(2), 3324. doi: 10.4249/scholarpedia.3324
Gallagher,
K., Balas, B., Matheny, J., & Sinha, P. (2005). The effects of scene
category and content on boundary extension. Proceedings
of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Stresa, Italy:
Cognitive Science Society.
Ménétrier,
E., Didierjean, A., & Vieillard, S. (2013). Is boundary extension
emotionally selective? The Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2013.764332
Photo credit:
brettwolff.tumblr.com/post/75298260530
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