ABSTRACT

How good is your memory? One line of research starting about 30 years ago shows that your memory for visually presented material is quite remarkably good. In a typical picture recognition study, subjects are shown a number of scenes— such as images cut from a glossy travel magazine—each of which is presented for a second or two. In the test phase, subjects are shown a second set of scenes, half of them from the first set and the other half presented for the first time. The task is to identify members of the second set as old or new. Subjects perform very well on such a task, even when thousands of pictures are shown.