The Foreground Bias: Initial Scene Representations Across the Depth Plane

When you walk into a large room, you perceive visual information that is both close to you in depth and farther in the background. Here, we investigated how initial scene representations are affected by information across depth. We examined the role of background and foreground information on scene gist by using chimera scenes (images with a foreground and background from different scene categories). Across three experiments, we found a foreground bias: Information in the foreground initially had a strong influence on the interpretation of the scene. This bias persisted when the initial fixation position was on the scene background and when the task was changed to emphasize scene information. We concluded that the foreground bias arises from initial processing of scenes for understanding and suggests that scene information closer to the observer is initially prioritized. We discuss the implications for theories of scene and depth perception.