Notes, Comments, and New Findings The Representation of Pictures in Memory

The two experiments presented in this article examined the memory representation of pictorial information. The technique used to investigate structure was priming in item recognition. Subjects studied a list of pictures and then were tested for recognition of parts of pictures. In Experiment 1, the time to recognize a target part of a picture was speeded (primed) if the immediately preceding part in the test list was from the same picture. This priming effect was larger if the two parts were interacting with each other in the picture than if they were not interacting. Experiment 2 showed more priming between the interacting, foreground parts of a picture than between one of the interacting parts and a background part. For noninteracting parts, priming between foreground parts was equal to priming between foreground and background parts. It is suggested that priming may prove a useful technique for investigating other aspects of the representation of pictorial information. In recent years, there has been considerable discussion about the representation of pictorial information in memory. The discussion has focused on the form of the representation—whether it is a pictorial, imagelike representation or a prepositional representation. In this article, the issues addressed concern not the form of the representation but rather its content. Specifically, the experiments are designed to investigate the relationships between the different parts of the representation of a picture in memory. The experiments also illustrate a new methodology for the study of memory for pictures. Figure 1 shows examples of the pictures used in the experiments. In the first picture, the policewoman and the pig are interacting with each other, whereas in the second picture, the two people standing by the bus stop are not interacting with each other. Thus, the relationships between the parts of the two pictures are different. This difference may lead to differences in the memory representations of the two pictures. The police