The Reachspace Database

Welcome to the Reachspace Database, a database of images depicting the reachable world!

 

Reachable spaces like the tops of our desks, counters, or workbenches, form the background to many of our everyday activities. As soon as we walk up to such a space, we instantly understand what objects it contains, how it is laid out, and what actions it affords. How are these reachable views represented in the mind and brain, to make such rapid understanding possible?

 

Here, we provide images intended to support academic research into the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that underlie our understanding of the reachable world.

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Publications

Check out our paper for details about how we collected the images and determined how to organize the database:

• Josephs, E. L., Zhao, H., & Konkle, T. (2021). The world within reach: an image database of reach-relevant environments. Journal of Vision, 21(14), 1-11 paper

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Contact

Please contact Emilie Josephs if you have questions or suggestions (reachspacedatabase@gmail.com)

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Acknowledgments

Many people worked hard to make this database possible. Thanks to Michelle Zhao, Jacob Prince, Emily Hurwitz and Eric Gasse for their contributions. This work was conducted in the lab of Talia Konkle at Harvard University, and supported in part by a grant from the Pershing Square Fund for Research on the Foundations of Human Behavior to Emilie Josephs, NIH-R21EY031867 to Talia Konkle, and the Harvard Data Science Initiative.

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