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When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination http://eprints.soton.ac.uk University of Southampton Faculty of Social and Human Sciences School of Psychology The Relationship between Encoding and Recall for the Identities and Locations of Objects David Corck-Adelman Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy November 2011 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY Doctor of Philosophy THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENCODING AND RECALL FOR THE IDENTITIES AND LOCATIONS OF OBJECTS By David Corck-Adelman Five experiments are reported which investigated the relationship between the number of fixations that participants made on objects in a photograph of a visual scene and the memory that participants exhibited for the identities and locations of those objects. The results of Experiment 1 showed that there is a very close relationship between encoding and recall for both the identities and locations of objects, and provided evidence that information about identities and locations of objects might be encoded differently. Specifically, the data suggested that object identities were encoded across multiple fixations, thereby accumulating in memory across separate fixations. However, object locations were encoded accurately after the first fixation on an object and did not appear to improve significantly with subsequent fixations. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the relationship between encoding and recall can be influenced using a lower-level attentional capture technique to draw - Experiment 3 investigated whether a primacy or recency effect was found for object identity and location memory. No such evidence was obtained for either. Experiment 4 provided evidence that information about the overall configuration of objects was encoded without the need for each object to be directly fixated. Experiments 4 and 5 both found that objects must be fixated for their specific location to be encoded, but also provided some suggestive evidence that object location memory might also accumulate across fixations (though to a lesser extent than for object identity memory). Hollingworth and experimental work. Modifications to this model were proposed to account for the current findings. In conclusion, the five experiments provide significant insight into encoding processes associated with memory for the identities and locations of objects. i ii Contents 1 Literature Review ............................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research on picture recognition .......................................................... 1 1.2 Change blindness ............................................................................... 9 1.3 Flicker paradigms ............................................................................. 15 1.4 Why does change blindness occur? Coherence Theory .................... 18 1.5 A challenge to Coherence Theory ...................................................... 21 1.6 Basic characteristics of eye movements ............................................. 24 1.7 Further challenges to Coherence Theory: Eye movements and change detection tasks ........................................................................................... 26 1.8 Why does change blindness occur? Visual Memory Model ............... 32 1.9 Why are change blindness results interesting? .................................. 34 1.10 Research into memory for object identities ....................................... 36 1.11 Research into memory for object locations ....................................... 46 1.12 Summary of previous literature ......................................................... 53 1.13 Proposed research and introduction to the novel paradigm ............... 54 2 The role of visual encoding in memory for object identity and object location ......................................................................................................... 57 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 57 2.1.1 Explanation of key procedures used in the thesis: General methods ...... 66 2.1.2 Calculation of placement error ............................................................... 67 2.1.3 Calculation of best fit error .................................................................... 70 2.1.4 Monte Carlo simulation to calculate random placement error ................ 71 2.2 Method ............................................................................................. 73 2.3 Results ............................................................................................. 74 2.4 Discussion ........................................................................................ 85 3 Using attentional capture to modulate the relationship between encoding and recall for object identity and object location ................ 95 3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 95 iii 3.1.1 Higher-level influences on eye movements: Task instructions ............... 96 3.1.2 Higher-level influences on eye movements: Prior knowledge................. 99 3.1.3 Higher-level Influences on eye movements: Linguistically-driven eye movements ......................................................................................................... 100 3.1.4 Lower-level Influences on eye movements: Saliency maps ................... 103 3.1.5 Lower-level influences on eye movements: Colour and visual search... 106 3.1.6 The present experiment ....................................................................... 110 3.2 Method ........................................................................................... 114 3.3 Results ........................................................................................... 117 3.4 Discussion ...................................................................................... 126 4 The influence of fixation order on memory for object identity and object location .............................................................................................. 133 4.1 Introduction .................................................................................... 133 4.1.1 Serial order and memory for words in lists ........................................... 134 4.1.2 Serial order and memory for the identity of objects in scenes .............. 136 4.1.3 Serial order and memory for the locations of objects in scenes ........... 141 4.1.4 Comparison of memory for word lists and memory for objects in scenes: Manner of encoding ............................................................................................ 142 4.1.5 Comparison of memory for word lists and memory for objects in scenes: Identification period ........................................................................................... 143 4.1.6 The present experiment ....................................................................... 144 4.2 Method ........................................................................................... 147 4.3 Results ........................................................................................... 149 4.4 Discussion ...................................................................................... 171 5 The relationship between the number of fixations on an object and memory for the configuration of objects and specific object locations .................................................................................................................. 187 5.1 Introduction .................................................................................... 187 5.1.1 .......................... 187 5.1.2 The time course of encoding for the spatial map: The link between the spatial map and scene gist ................................................................................. 190 iv 5.1.3 Scene gist ............................................................................................ 190 5.1.4 The nature of the spatial map: The link between the spatial map and saliency maps ..................................................................................................... 193 5.1.5 Are object identities and specific object locations encoded in the same way? What is the time course of encoding for object identities and object locations? ........................................................................................................... 196 5.1.6 When does consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory happen? ................................................................................................ 202 5.1.7 Summary of the Visual Memory Model and its relationship