title: Connecting the past with the present: how do humans match an incoming visual display with visual memory?
abstract: Extensive cognitive research has been devoted to the sensitivity of the visual system to invariant statistical information. For example, many studies have shown that performance improves when a visual display is presented repeatedly. But what allows humans to connect the current visual input to previous memory? Is the connection made only when the entire incoming display matches with a previous memory, or can retrieval rely on an incomplete match between the input and a learned display? Using a visual search task, we show that (1) once a repeated display is learned, subjects can retrieve it even when an incoming display only matches it in 3-4 locations; (2) however, early during learning, repetition of a small proportion of a display is not enough to establish a strong memory trace for the repeated locations. We suggest that the retrieval of a well-established visual memory can proceed even if an incoming display partly matches the previous memory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. jhsong@fas.harvard.edu
authors.forename: Joo-Hyun
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Yuhong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*