Object appearance and picture-specific viewpoint are not integrated in long-term memory

Abstract

Previous work has demonstrated that visual long-term memory (VLTM) stores detailed information about object appearance. The current experiments investigate whether object appearance information in VLTM is integrated within representations that contain picture-specific viewpoint information. In three experiments using both incidental and intentional encoding instructions, participants were unable to perform above chance on recognition tests that required recognizing the conjunction of object appearance and viewpoint information (Experiments 1a, 1b, 2, and 3). However, performance was better when object appearance information (Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2) or picture-specific viewpoint information (Experiment 3) alone was sufficient to succeed on the memory test. These results replicate previous work demonstrating good memory for object appearance and viewpoint. However the current results suggest that object appearance and viewpoint are not episodically integrated in VLTM.

Keywords:

• Picture memory
• Visual memory
• Scene representation
• Recognition memory

Acknowledgments

Support for this research was provided by funds from Knox College awarded to D.A.V. We thank Jim Barrett, Christina Pfaff, Timothy J. Rairdon, and Tom Von Geldern for assisting with data collection. We also thank Stephen Killingsworth and two anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Cover task performance was also analysed in terms of the nonparametric sensitivity index A′ (Grier, 1971) and in terms of hits and false alarms. The pattern of results did not differ.

² The maximum number of trials removed for any given participant was two. The pattern of results does not change if these trials are included here and in subsequent experiments.

³ We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for mentioning the similarity between our claim and these models.