Context Effect And Position Specificity In Visual Memory For Objects

The force choice recognition task was used to investigate the context effect and position specificity on visual memory for objects. Three parts were included in this study, in the first part, the following-the-dot paradigm and the traditional force choice recognition task were used to examine the effect of object arrays and natural scenes on the visual memory of objects. In the second part, the position specificity of context effect of scenes and its two components, the large scale context and the local objects context, ware examined. In the third part, by rotating the angle of the recognition picture, the reference of the context effect was examined. The results showed: (1) Memory performance of visual form of object was more accurate when the test object alternatives were displayed within the original scene context than they were displayed in isolation. (2)Memory performance was more accurate when the objects displayed in the nature scenes than they displayed in the objects arrays. (3)Memory performance was more accurate for the recently fixated objects than the condition of 1,2,4,7 intervening objects, but the performance was not significant between the different intervening pictures. (4) Memory performance was more accurate when the test alternatives were displayed within the scene at the same position originally occupied by the target than they were displayed at a different position. (5) For natural scenes, the memory performance was more accurate when the objects displayed in the original scene context and the large scale context than they displayed in isolation. (6)For natural scenes, the position specificity was exited for the large scale context effect, but not for the local object context effect. (7) The context effect and position specificity was reference to the relative location of scenes, but not to the absolute physical location.