Remembering left-right orientation of pictures

In a study of recognition memory for pictures, we observed an asymmetry in classifying test items as "same" versus "different" in left-right orientation: Identical copies of previously viewed items were classified more accurately than left-right reversals of those items. Response bias could not explain this asymmetry, and, moreover, correct "same" and "different" classifications were independently manipulable: Whereas repetition of input pictures (one vs. two presentations) affected primarily correct "same" classifications, retention interval (3 hr vs. 1 week) affected primarily correct "different" classifications. In addition, repetition but not retention interval affected judgments that previously seen pictures (both identical and reversed) were "old". These and additional findings supported a dual-process hypothesis that links "same" classifications to high familiarity, and "different" classifications to conscious sampling of images of previously viewed pictures.     

Individual differences in the relationship between pleasure and arousal

The two fundamental dimensions assumed to underlie emotional experience—pleasure and arousal—are considered to be independent across individuals. We present evidence from an experience sampling study demonstrating that this independence does not necessarily hold when considering the affective experiences of a single individual. Participants (N = 80) reported how they were feeling in terms of pleasure and arousal nine times a day for seven days. The data showed that, although on average pleasure and arousal were independent, within-person pleasure–arousal associations substantially varied and ranged from strongly positive to strongly negative. This finding demonstrates that pleasant/unpleasant feelings usually co-occur with high arousal for some (reflecting joy/stress), but with low arousal for others (reflecting relaxation/sadness) and that persons differ in whether arousal is usually pleasant or unpleasant. These differences were found to be related to dispositional reward responsiveness, with high reward responsive individuals being characterized by a positive relation between pleasure and arousal and vice versa.     

Processing emotional pictures and words: Effects of valence and arousal

There is considerable debate regarding the extent to which limbic regions respond differentially to items with different valences (positive or negative) or to different stimulus types (pictures or words). In the present event-related fMRI study, 21 participants viewed words and pictures that were neutral, negative, or positive. Negative and positive items were equated on arousal. The participants rated each item for whether it depicted or described something animate or inanimate or something common or uncommon. For both pictures and words, the amygdala, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), and ventromedial PFC responded equally to all high-arousal items, regardless of valence. Laterality effects in the amygdala were based on the stimulus type (word 5 left, picture 5 bilateral). Valence effects were most apparent when the individuals processed pictures, and the results revealed a lateral/medial distinction within the PFC: The lateral PFC responded differentially to negative items, whereas the medial PFC was more engaged during the processing of positive pictures.     

Remembering pleasure and personal meaning from episodes of intrinsic motivation: an fMRI study

Motivation and Emotion - To decide whether or not to participate in an upcoming activity, people can use their memories of intrinsically-motivating or non-intrinsically-motivating experiences...     

Comprehension and memory for pictures

The thesis advanced is that people remember nonsensical pictures much better if they comprehend what they are about. Two experiments supported this thesis. In the first, nonsensical "droodles" were studied by subjects with or without an accompanying verbal interpretation of the pictures. Free recall was much better for subjects receiving the interpretation during study. Also, a later recognition test showed that subjects receiving the interpretation rated as more similar to the original picture a distractor which was close to the prototype of the interpreted category. In Experiment II, subjects studied pairs of nonsensical pictures, with or without a linking interpretation provided. Subjects who heard a phrase identifying and interrelating the pictures of a pair showed greater associative recall and matching than subjects who received no interpretation. The results suggest that memory is aided whenever contextual cues arouse appropriate schemata into which the material to be learned can be fitted.     

Remembering 1500 pictures: the right hemisphere remembers better than the left

We hypothesized that the right hemisphere would be superior to the left hemisphere in remembering having seen a specific picture before, given its superiority in perceptually encoding specific aspects of visual form. A large set of pictures (N=1500) of animals, human faces, artifacts, landscapes, and art paintings were shown for 2s in central vision, or tachistoscopically (for 100ms) in each half visual field, to normal participants who were then tested 1-6 days later for their recognition. Images that were presented initially to the right hemisphere were better recognized than those presented to the left hemisphere. These results, obtained with participants with intact brains, large number of stimuli, and long retention delays, are consistent with previously described hemispheric differences in the memory of split-brain patients.     

Long-term memory for pictures and sentences

Two experiments were conducted to examine the fan effect in recognition memory for pictures and sentences. Subjects in the first experiment memorized sets of pictures (N= 13) or sentences (N=13) in which the study items comprised concept combinations (e.g., the clock is on the television) that could be unambiguously depicted in each modality. The fan effect, contrasting study items involving unique- and shared-concepts combinations, was observed in the recognition reaction time data for sentences but not for pictures. Subjects in the second experiment (N= 17) memorized sets of pictures and sentences in which, in addition to the unique and shared intramodality conditions used in Experiment 1, subjects memorized items in each modality that shared concepts with items in the alternative modality. Although the fan effect was reduced for sentences in the second experiment, the intramodality results were qualitatively comparable to those obtained in Experiment 1. The results in the intermodality conditions indicated that, although pictorial study items influenced reaction time to sentences with which they shared a concept, the reverse was not the case. The results were thought to be inconsistent with the view that pictures and sentences enjoy a common representational format in long-term memory.     

Arousal and memory: phasic measures of arousal in a free recall task.

EEG alpha activity and skin potential were monitored during word presentation in a single trial free recall task. Phasic changes in EEG alpha and skin potential, co-occurring with word onset, were positively related to recall at an immediate retention interval (2 min) but not after a delay (45 min). The results were interpreted as supporting the extension of Routtenberg's (1968) two-arousal system hypothesis to human memory. Arousal was viewed as affecting memory during the attribute encoding stage of memory storage.     

Visual recognition memory for large and small binary pictures.

Recognition memory for pictures was tested using matrices of 0s and 1s as stimuli in two experiments. In the first experiment dimensionality of matrices was varied (5 X 5 and 10 X 10 matrices). The results showed better recognition memory for 10 X 10 matrices. The second experiment investigated the importance of certain areas, such as center or surround, using 10 X 10 matrices only. The results suggested that neither center nor surround is given unusual weight.     

Long-term perceptual specificity effects in recognition memory: the transformed pictures paradigm.

The effects of a study/test mismatch in the viewing mode of natural scenes on recognition memory performance were examined. At both encoding and retrieval, scenes were presented either by being divided into quarters that were displayed in a sequential cumulative fashion or by scrolling the images through the screen, thereby gradually revealing the content of the images. Half of the participants were tested immediately after encoding and the other half after 48 hours. For both the immediate and delayed retrieval conditions, better recognition memory was demonstrated when viewing modes matched across study and test than when they mismatched. Implications for current processing and multiple systems views of memory are discussed.     

Retrieval of pictures and words from long-term memory: Effects upon short-term memory

On each of a series of Brown-Peterson short-term memory (STM) tests, the presentation of a verbal to-be-remembered (TBR) item (a five-letter quintogram in Experiment 1 and an eight-letter octogram in Experiment 2) was followed immediately by a 10-sec retention interval. During the retention interval, subjects recalled and reproduced previously learned paired associate response triads that consisted of three concrete pictures, concrete words, abstract pictures, or abstract words. Following selective retrieval of one of the four types of response triads from long-term memory (LTM), subjects attempted to recall the TBR items from STM. In both experiments, the intervening retrieval of abstract words resulted in significantly poorer retention of the TBR items than did the intervening retrieval of concrete words; the retrieval of concrete words resulted, in turn, in significantly poorer retention of the TBR items than did the retrieval of concrete or abstract pictures. Retrieval of the latter two types of materials appeared not to interfere with the short-term retention of the TBR verbal material (i.e., the quintograms and octograms). The results reflect the occurrence of selective interference effects, and, except for one discrepant finding, appear to be consistent with Paivio’s 11971) dual-coding hypothesis and Shiffrin and Schneider’s (1977) general theory of memory.     

Recognition memory for related pictures

This study presents a test of the notion of semantic integration of information m pictures. In Experiment 1. subjects were presented pictures which comprised various subsets of the elements in one of four standard pictures. In the test phase. recognition confidence tor old and new items was a direct function of the number of figures in the test picture. However. recognition confidence was significantly higher for old than for new pictures, contrary to predictions of the integration model of Bransford and Franks (1971). In Experiment 2, the differential predictions of the integration model and the tally model (Reitman & Bower, 19731 were tested. The information for a key standard picture was presented solely as ONEs during acquisition. For the other three standard pictures. information was presented as ONEs, TWOs, and THREEs. The results were that recognition confidence increased with complexity at the test item with regular items but decreased with increasing complexity with key items. Together. these experiments support the tally model and demonstrate the generalizabilitv of this model to handle pictorial materials. Implications regarding the nature of picture memory are also discussed.     

Hypermnesia for pictures: Incremental memory for pictures but not words in multiple recall trials

Two studies are reported on multiple forced recall following a single visual presentation of a sequence of pictures or words. In both experiments, a hypermnesic memory function (in which performance improved with repeated recall) was obtained for pictures, while a flat, nonincremental function was obtained for words. Interpolation of intervals of thinking between recall trials further enhanced hypermnesia for pictorial items. Retrieval, whether overt (recall trials) or covert (thinking), apparently produces increased net recovery of pictures but not words.     

Aging and memory for pictures of faces

The hypothesis that pictorial aspects of face-recognition memory are lower in old age was tested in 2 studies. Young and elderly Ss viewed 48 face pictures, and then took a test containing identical copies of input faces, pictorially changed versions of input faces, and entirely new faces. Replicating prior findings, Experiment 1 showed that false recognitions of entirely new faces were higher among elderly Ss. However, there were no age differences in distinguishing identical from pictorially changed faces. Using a modified test, Experiment 2 showed that although the elderly Ss had good knowledge that changed faces were changed, they had relatively poor knowledge of how they were changed. There appears to be age differences in analytical matching of pictorial information against information in memory.     

Speech-like coding of pictures in short-term memory

Memory span for pictures of common objects and for the names of these objects was examined as a function of three speech-related variables. Both picture span and name span were found to be influenced by the phonological similarity (Experiment 1) and the length (Experiment 2) of the names, as well as by the subject’s engaging in “irrelevant” vocalization during item presentation (Experiment 3). Moreover, for each variable the effect was in the same direction and of comparable magnitude for the two types of items. Experiments 4-6 replicated these findings with the procedure modified such that the retention of order information was not required. It is concluded that under the present conditions, there is a substantial functional equivalence between short-term memory for readily nameable pictures and for words and that this equivalence may be thought of as due to mediation by a common, “speech-like” code.     

Feeding-based arousal effects on visual recognition memory in early infancy.

Arousal effects on a 1-trial visual recognition paired-comparison task were studied at newborn, 1-month, and 4-month test ages. Infants were tested before and after feeding, with arousal assumed to be lower after feeding. Newborns and 1-month-olds shifted from a familiarity preference before feeding to a novelty preference after feeding. A control group tested only after feeding confirmed that this shift was not due to increased stimulus exposure from the prefeeding test. By 4 months, infants showed novelty preferences independent of feeding. This age by arousal interaction for recognition memory extends previous knowledge by including endogenous arousal with age, stimulus, and length of exposure as contributors to familiarity-novelty preferences. It also extends and provides converging evidence for arousal effects on visual attention in early infancy found previously with preferential looking. A shift from subcortical to cortical dominance is supported.