16:30 - 18:00
Talk Session 6
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16:30 - 18:00
Tue—HZ_2—Talks6—59
Tue-Talks6
Room:
Room: HZ_2
Chair/s:
Siri-Maria Kamp
Visual memory capacity is susceptible to multiple influences during more naturalistic encoding
Tue—HZ_2—Talks6—5903
Presented by: Sharon Gilaie-Dotan
Sharon Gilaie-Dotan *Reout DayanOlga Kreichman
Faculty of Life Science School of Optometry and Vision Science and The Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Although studies show that human visual memory for object images is phenomenal during active engaging encoding, it is still unclear if this reflects memory during naturalistic visual behavior. Recent studies in our lab show that during naturalistic encoding, image memory is much poorer than the levels reported earlier and that the knowledge that an image was not seen before was much higher than the recognition memory for already-seen images. Here in a set of comprehensive experiments (n=249) we parametrically examined whether during more naturalistic-like encoding, memory for object images is robust or susceptible to multiple factors. Our earlier results with face, people, indoor and outdoor images were first replicated with object images. In addition, we found that during these less engaging encoding conditions people's memory was adversely affected by the number of encoded images and by the number of novel (distractor) images the previously seen image was tested amongst (from best performance of ~90% memory in a 2AFC task for 60 encoded images down to ~50% memory in a 6AFC task for 180 encoded images). While our capacity for remembering new images can reach outstanding levels during highly engaging conditions, our results indicate that during more naturalistic-like conditions, image memory is much weaker and susceptible to multiple influences. We assume that our findings overestimate everyday visual memory capacity and that much less of the novel information we come across everyday actually registers in memory.
Keywords: visual memory, image memory, visual categories, naturalistic encoding, memory capacity