Increasing word distinctiveness eliminates the picture superiority effect in recognition: Evidence for the physical-distinctiveness account

Abstract

A well-established phenomenon in the memory literature is the picture superiority effect-the finding that, all else being equal, memory is better for pictures than for words (Paivio & Csapo, 1973). Theorists have attributed pictures' mnemonic advantage to dual coding (Paivio, 1971), conceptual distinctiveness (Hamilton & Geraci, 2006), and physical distinctiveness (Mintzer & Snodgrass, 1999). Here, we present a novel test of the physical-distinctiveness account of picture superiority: If the greater physical variability of pictures relative to words is responsible for their mnemonic benefit, then increasing the distinctiveness of words and/or reducing the physical variability of pictures should reduce or eliminate the picture superiority effect. In the present experiments we increased word distinctiveness by varying font style, font size, color, and capitalization. Additionally, in Experiment 3 we reduced the distinctiveness of pictures by presenting black-and-white pictures with similar orientations. In Experiment 4, a forced choice procedure was used in which subjects were asked to identify the form that each probe had taken during the study phase. The results were consistent with the distinctiveness prediction and, notably, were inconsistent with dual coding.

Modality-specific forgetting

“…Third, the possibility that the nature of visual stimuli, and the visual world in general, is richly detailed enough that encounters with visual objects trigger different memory mechanisms than words, is precisely the argument we make here of modality-specific forgetting. If characteristics of the visual world (e.g., color) must be removed in order to alter patterns of forgetting (Ensor, Surprenant, & Neath, 2018), this supports the conclusion that theories of forgetting must account for a variety of stimulus materials, including and especially those encountered in daily life. That is, because removing the color from visual objects is not how we encounter objects in the real world, such a test is not a good indicator of how we forget real world visual objects.…”

Does rehearsal matter? Left anterior temporal alpha and theta band changes correlate with the beneficial effects of rehearsal on working memory

“…The benefit of a recoding a visually presented stimulus depends on whether semantic associations are automatically accessed without labeling 5,33 . In Experiment 1 automatic semantic associations occurred; thus, the addition of rehearsing with a generated label offered no more benefit than accessing those stored associations 12,14,26 . Although some stimuli such as spatial layouts may not benefit from recoding 25 , some complex stimuli may benefit from this processes.…”

“…However, there was no difference in performance on the short-or long-term memory task with intact scenes, which suggests that complex scenes do not benefit from this type of maintenance strategy. Complex scenes automatically trigger stored semantic associations 12 ; as a result, the association provided automatic deeper encoding 11 for both conditions. It has also been established that humans can remember thousands of images after only seeing the images for a brief time [29][30][31] .…”

“…In experiment 2, phasescrambled images that lacked semantic content were used and these images benefited from recoding and rehearsal. This suggests that the benefit of rehearsal depends on the ability to associate semantic meaning; therefore, when participants generated a label and rehearsed throughout the delay period, they engaged in deeper encoding and elaborative rehearsal 4,11,12,34,35 improving short-term memory for these stimuli as well as long-term memory. These findings are consistent with the idea that generating a label and rehearsing is only beneficial to visual stimuli when semantic information is not automatically accessed 14 because it may direct the subjects' attention to salient features 5 to support memory.…”

“…beaches are located in warm places and have palm trees). Thus, combining visual information with a semantic verbal representation may result in a deeper level of encoding 11,12 because the stimulus is encoded in both the visual and verbal domains 13 . The novel features of the visual stimuli may also help to guide attention to salient features which facilitates encoding 13,14 .…”