Misremembering pictured objects: People of all ages demonstrate the boundary extension illusion

JOHN G. SEAMON, SARAH E. SCHLEGEL, PETER M. HIESTER, SUSAN M. LANDAU, and BRIANNE F. BLUMENTHAL
Wesleyan University

In the boundary extension illusion, subjects recollect more of a photographed scene than was originally shown. In this study, first- and fifth-grade children, young adult college students, and older adults studied 4 one-object or 4 twoobject picture stimuli for 15 s each. Immediately after each visual scene was shown, the subjects drew it from memory inside a rectangle that was the same size as the previous picture. This study demonstrated that all age groups, from young children to older adults, were susceptible to the boundary extension illusion. This finding is discussed in terms of Intraub’s perceptual schema hypothesis and Johnson’s source-monitoring hypothesis.