PSYC 3610 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Eyewitness Memory, Visual Memory, Mental Rotation
20 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
CHAPTER 6 VISUAL MEMORY
Eyewitness Testimony (Video)
Visual Memory: Recognition and Recall
Recognition vs. Detail
Representation and Imagery
Two main classes of theories as to how we represent visual information in
memory
Shepard and Metzler (1971): Mental Rotation Experiment
Neuroimaging and the Analog View
Hemifield Neglect (Unilateral Neglect)
Photographic Memory: Reality or Fantasy?
Cognitive maps
Memory for Faces
Eyewitness Memory for Faces
Two kinds of recognition tests
Verbal Descriptions
Own-Race/Cross-race bias
The Neuroscience of face memory
Application of visual imagery to mnemonics
Method of Loci
Keyword technique
Wang and Thomas (1965)
Pegword Mnemonic
Interactive vs. Bizarre imagery
How to become a memory master (TEDtalk)
2
Eyewitness Testimony (Video)
• During the photo line-up, Jennifer took about 5 mins to carefully choose the
suspect.
o Recognition is very rapid – based on feelings of familiarity
Visual Memory: Recognition and Recall
• Visual memory presents several difficult methodological issues.
• How do you get someone to report a visual image?
o Verbal description – may be inadequate
o Drawing – not possible with many people who lack the requisite skill;
can only be rough approximates based on description
o Both drawing and giving verbal descriptions are problematic, because
we “feel” as if neither format conveys the information that we think is in
our visual memory.
• Most researchers opt for recognition test when assessing visual memory,
which is problematic because most verbal memory studies can also use
recall.
Recognition vs. Detail
• While we may not remember all of the details, we are good at recognizing
pictures we have seen.
• Recognition is usually the measure that researchers use when examining
long-term visual memory.
o Old-new recognition tests are used.
• Standing (1973) showed people 10 000 pictures over a five-day period.
o At test, some of the original pictures are mixed with pictures that had
not been presented.
o Participants correctly identified about 2/3 of the pictures, which they
had only seen once before.
3
• Fine recognition distinctions between old and new pictures demonstrate that
we are attending to the details in visual images.
Representation and Imagery
• Representation means the storage of information in long-term memory when
that information is not in use.
• When we need to retrieve information, we activate it from this long-term
representational system, which then creates a visual image.
o This representational code is not the visual image itself, rather it is the
manner in which that image is stored when not in use.
• Representation means the format in which maintain these visual images
between the time we perceived them and the time we remembered them.
o When we retrieve these representations, we then experience mental
imagery.
• Imagery: the experience of retrieving a memory that is mostly visual or
experienced primarily as a sensory experience
o Can also refer to the representation of those memories
Two main classes of theories as to how we represent visual
information in memory
• Analog representation: the cognitive representation of image is stored as
pictures in a visual format
• Propositional representation: the cognitive representation of images is
stored in an abstract language-like format
o Propositional view does not deny that our images appear to us as
pictures.
o It states that we do not store images in a pictorial format.
o Our representation is in an abstract code.
o At the time of retrieval, we reconstruct a visual image based on that
representation.
