"Honey, I shrunk the scene": Decoupling the impact of distance from content on memory for scene boundaries

Memory often fills in what's not there. A striking example of this is boundary extension, whereby observers mistakenly recall a view that extends beyond what was actually seen. However, not all scenes induce boundary extension—suggesting that this process is triggered by specific scene properties. Revealing these properties is crucial for understanding how memory reshapes scene boundaries. Here we explored (in five experiments; N=500 adults) whether boundary extension is driven by perceived viewing distance. We created "fake-miniatures" by exploiting tilt-shift, a photographic effect which selectively reduces perceived distance while preserving other scene properties (e.g., making a distant railway appear like a model-train). Fake-miniaturization increased boundary extension for otherwise identical scenes: Participants who performed a scene-memory task misremembered fake-miniaturized views as farther than they actually were. This effect went beyond low-level image changes and generalized to a completely different distance manipulation. Thus, perceived distance modulates how scene boundaries are reshaped in memory.