Scene schemata in memory for spatial relations

Two schema-based hypotheses were developed and tested regarding recall for the following five types of spatial relations: scene-expected relations, two types of scene-unexpected relations, and two types of scene-irrelevant relations. In two experiments, subjects read relations that were described in passages and then recalled the passages. An attention hypothesis states that the amount of attention directed to a relation increases as the relation increasingly deviates from the schema. This hypothesis predicts high recall for unexpected relations, intermediate recall for irrelevant relations, and low recall for expected relations. A retrieval hypothesis states that a schema guides the search for schema-related information. This hypothesis predicts high recall for expected relations, intermediate recall for one type of scene-unexpected relation and one type of scene-irrelevant relation, and low recall for the remaining types of relations that are unexpected and irrelevant. The results of Experiment 1 supported certain predictions of both hypotheses, and the results of Experiment 2 supported the retrieval hypothesis.