Anticipatory spatial representation of 3D regions explored by sighted observers and a deaf-and-blind-observer

Viewers who study photographs of scenes tend to remember having seen beyond the boundaries of the view [boundary extension; J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 15 (1989) 179]. Is this a fundamental aspect of scene representation? Forty undergraduates explored bounded regions of six common (3D) scenes, visually or haptically (while blindfolded) and then the delimiting borders were removed. Minutes later they reconstructed boundary placement. Boundary extension occurred: mean areas were increased by 53% (vision) and by 17% (haptics). A deaf-and-blind woman (KC) haptically explored the same regions. Although a “haptic expert”, she too remembered having explored beyond the boundaries, with performance similar to that of the blindfolded-sighted. Boundary extension appears to be a fundamental aspect of spatial cognition. Possibly constrained by the “scope” of the input modality (vision>haptics), this anticipatory spatial representation may facilitate integration of successively perceived regions of the world irrespective of modality and the perceiverʹs sensory history.