Abstract
Predictions of environmental rules (here referred to as “scene grammar”) can come in different forms: seeing a toilet in a living room would violate semantic predictions, while finding a toilet brush next to the toothpaste would violate syntactic predictions. The existence of such predictions has usually been investigated by showing observers images containing such grammatical violations. Conversely, the generative process of creating an environment according to one’s scene grammar and its effects on behavior and memory has received little attention. In a virtual reality paradigm, we either instructed participants to arrange objects according to their scene grammar or against it. Subsequently, participants’ memory for the arrangements was probed using a surprise recall (Exp1), or repeated search (Exp2) task. As a result, participants’ construction behavior showed strategic use of larger, static objects to anchor the location of smaller objects which are generally the goals of everyday actions. Further analysis of this scene construction data revealed possible commonalities between the rules governing word usage in language and object usage in naturalistic environments. Taken together, we revealed some of the building blocks of scene grammar necessary for efficient behavior, which differentially influence how we interact with objects and what we remember about scenes.
Highlights
Our world is complex, it adheres to certain rules
We will provide insights regarding the building blocks of scene grammar as it unfolds during scene construction, how scene grammar influences the way we interact with objects and what we remember about a scene, and provide further hints for systematic commonalities between occurrences of words in language and the spatial arrangement of naturalistic environments
In the first study we investigated how arranging environments according to – or in direct violation of – our predictions influence our behavior and extant memory representations and how these effects are modulated by the different building blocks of scene grammar
Summary
Our world is complex, it adheres to certain rules. These are rules which we learn and continuously update throughout our lives. For example, creating environments that adhere either more or less to common scene grammar affect behavior and memory? We either instructed participants to arrange objects in a meaningful way within a virtual reality environment (e.g. placing the pot on the stove), or to violate scene grammar. Not all objects are created equal within a scene, so identifying elements of a scene which contribute differently to the predictions we generate about the scene as a whole as well as other objects is crucial for understanding scene grammar. To investigate if the influence of scene grammar on current and future behavior is mediated by different components of a scene, we distinguished local and global objects. Uncovering similarities to basic rules of language generation can provide the first step towards a comprehensive understanding of commonalities between scenes perception and language processing. To investigate possible commonalities between systematic occurrences of words in language and systematic occurrences of objects in naturalistic environments, we calculated frequency distributions of object pairs positioned in close proximity across participants
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