Redundancy effects in the perception and memory of visual objects

Abstract

Is visual representation of an object affected by whether surrounding objects are identical to it, different from it, or absent? To address this question, we tested perceptual priming, visual short-term, and long-term memory for objects presented in isolation or with other objects. Experiment 1 used a priming procedure, where the prime display contained a single face, four identical faces, or four different faces. Subjects identified the gender of a subsequent probe face that either matched or mismatched with one of the prime faces. Priming was stronger when the prime was four identical faces than when it was a single face or four different faces. Experiments 2 and 3 asked subjects to encode four different objects presented on four displays. Holding memory load constant, visual memory was better when each of the four displays contained four duplicates of a single object, than when each display contained a single object. These results suggest that an object's perceptual and memory representations are enhanced when presented with identical objects, revealing redundancy effects in visual processing.

Keywords:

• Perceptual priming
• Redundancy effects
• Visual long-term memory
• Visual short-term memory

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Grant-In-Aid from the University of Minnesota to YVJ. We thank Jen Decker, Sheng He, Anshul Jain, Nancy Kanwisher, Joseph Krummenacher, Tal Makovski, Khena Swallow, Jim Tanaka, and an anonymous reviewer for comments and discussions. Portions of the research in this paper use the FERET database of facial images collected under the FERET program, sponsored by the DOD Counterdrug Technology Development Program Office.

Notes

¹In Experiment 2, the same set of 30 stimuli was repeatedly sampled on different trials. Consequently, a memory object on one trial may be a nonmemory object on another. This procedure of resampling the same limited set of stimuli is common in studies of visual short-term memory, but can create significant proactive interference (Makovski & Jiang, 2008).