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04 February 2014

More than meets the Eye

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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