title: Object specificity and personal relevance in long-term visual remembering.
abstract: The personal relevance of an object is multi-faceted, each facet being capable of contributing to the effects on object memory attributed to personal relevance. An object's status as an individual object (object specificity), rather than just a category of object, is one such facet and its impact on the long-term visual remembering of everyday objects is assessed in two experiments. Images and drawings were produced under generic (e.g., "Please draw a bed") and personal exemplar (e.g., "Please draw your bed") instructions, and participants indicated the degree to which the image on which their drawing was based was of a specific object or a generic object. Object specificity induced a sense of time and place for a remembered object, the most recent encounter with the object being most salient. Other aspects of personal relevance collectively facilitated the retrieval of an object's category-irrelevant features (thereby increasing the vividness of the object image), the other objects with which it was seen, and a more general episodic sense of place. Against a broader theoretical perspective, it is proposed that visual episodic memory and visual knowledge are primary sources of information for specific personally relevant objects and generic objects, respectively.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. p.walker@lancaster.ac.uk
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mahon
authors.forename: Helen
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.forename: Damon
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Berridge
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D057567:Memory, Long-Term; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010067:Ownership; D013997:Time Factors