The abstraction of schematic representations from photographs of real-world scenes

Photographs of a downtown street scene were taken from four different locations. At each location the photographs were taken in 12 different directions, 30 deg apart. In the acquisition phase of the experiments, subjects learned to identify the photographs in terms of the location from which they were taken. The testing phase took place immediately after acquisition, after a 1-week delay, after a 6-month delay, and on one occasion after a 1-year delay. Subjects were tested for their ability to identify the camera location for previously seen and new photographs, to discriminate previously seen from new photographs f!.e., recognition), and to place the camera locations on a map of the street scene. The results of six experiments provided converging evidence that subjects abstracted a schematic representation of the spatial layout of the scene from the discrete, partially overlapping photographic samples presented during acquisition.