Effect of Expertise on Boundary Extension in Approach Sequences

In a constantly changing environment, one of the conditions for adaptation is based on the visual system’s ability to realize predictions. In this context, a question that arises is the evolution of the processes allowing anticipation with regard to the acquisition of knowledge relative to specific situations. We sought to study this question by focusing on boundary extension, the tendency to overestimate the scope of a previously perceived scene. We presented to novice, beginner, and expert car drivers road scenes in the form of approach sequences constituting very briefly displayed photographs (i.e., 250 milliseconds each), in order to determine the effect of expertise at an early stage of scene perception. After three presentations, participants had to judge whether a fourth photograph was the same, closer up, or further away than the third one. When experts and beginners showed a classical boundary extension effect, novices presented no directional memory distortion. Different hypotheses are discussed.