Vertical biases in scene memory

In a recent theoretical paper (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1990, 13, 519-542), Previc argued that vertical asymmetries in perception may largely result from the biases of the lower and upper visual :fields toward proximal and distal space, respectively. The present study examined whether this same relationship may exist for visual scene memory, by re-analyzing data from Intraub and Richardson (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory, and Cognition, 1989, 15, 179-187). In that study, subjects remembered photographs of scenes as being farther away than was actually the case and extended the boundaries of the scenes accordingly; in some cases, the remembered scenes were also shifted vertically. This study formally examined whether prominent landmarks in Intraub and Richardson's close-up and wide-angle photographs were displaced vertically in subjects' reproductions of them from memory. A total of 475 measurements in 210 drawings by 41 subjects were made. The results were that 64% of the original landmark points were shifted downward in the drawings made from memory, whereas only 36% were shifted upward. Although most of the original points were located in the upper-field and would have been expected to be shifted downward as the original image contracted in memory, a chi-square analysis showed that more upper-field points were shifted downward than were lower-field points shifted upward in the remembered scenes. The downward shift could reflect an expansion of the upper-field in memory, consistent with the scene being placed farther away, or it could reflect an elevation of the assumed viewing (head) position in memory. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.