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.