Boundary Extension
A memory distortion in which people remember seeing more of a scene than was actually shown — as if the camera had been pulled back slightly, expanding the boundaries of the image.
Origin
Cognitive psychologist Helene Intraub and Mary Richardson discovered the phenomenon in their 1989 study "Wide-Angle Memories of Close-Up Scenes," published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory. Participants consistently remembered close-up photographs as wider-angle views, insisting the original crop was too tight. Intraub proposed that the visual system automatically generates expectations about a scene's layout beyond its borders, and these expectations merge with the actual memory to produce the extension.
Everyday Use
Look at a photo, then close your eyes and picture it. Chances are your mental image includes more of the surrounding scene than the photo actually showed. Your brain fills in what it expects to be just outside the frame — a helpful prediction engine that occasionally produces false memories.