Examining the Hierarchical Nature of Scene Representations in Memory

How are scene representations stored in memory? Researchers have often posited that scene representations have a hierarchical structure with background elements providing a scaffold for more detailed foreground elements. To further investigate scene representation and the role of background and foreground information, we introduced a new stimulus set: chimera scenes, which have the central block of objects belonging to one scene category (foreground), and the surrounding structure belonging to another (background). We used a contextual cueing paradigm and emphasized the relative importance of each by having the target placed on either the background or foreground. In a transfer block, we found that though changes to the background were highly detrimental to search performance for background targets, search performance was only slightly affected by changes to either the foreground or the background for foreground targets. These results indicate that rather than a fixed hierarchy, the structure of scene representations are more aptly captured by a parallel model that stores information flexibly.