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Enhanced Memory for Scenes Presented at Behaviorally

Relevant Points in Time
Jeffrey, Y. Lin, Amanda D. Pype, Scott O. Murray, Geoffrey M. Boynton
Normally for the average human being it requires only 100 milliseconds or less to
understand and image but it requires at least 300 milliseconds of processing to successfully store
an image into ones brain into a memory. Novelty is often believed to increase a persons
attention on specific image or experience and this focused attention will then lead to an enhanced
memory of the specific image or experience. When a specific image or experience is perceived
can also enhance ones ability to memorize that specific image or experience.
Little is known about exactly how the brain works and functions. How our brain stores
images and scenes and then is able to recollect these images in the act of remembering is one of
the things we know little about. In this study they are trying to determine whether behaviorally
relevant points in time have an effect on memory formation. Behaviorally relevant points in time
meaning a point of time that is important for the future execution or completion of an auditory or
visual task.
These experiments were done by giving each participant a test using RSVP (Rapid Serial
Visual Presentation). In each test there were 16 scenes that were shown at 133 milliseconds per
scene. After all scenes were viewed the participant was shown a test image and asked if they had
seen it within 16 images that were shown to them. There were five test in total including a
control and each test added a different variation. In experiment 1 they were given just normal
images of natural and urban scenes. In experiment 2 the image had target letter and had to type
each letter as they went through each scene. In experiment 3 they replaced the letter task with an

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auditory task. In experiment 4 it had target letters like experiment 2 but participants were asked
to ignore them.
For each experiment they used a t test to review the results they received. In experiment 1
participants performed no better than chance, only answering correctly at 51.32% with a margin
of error at 4.03%. In experiment 2 the accuracy of the participants greatly increased to 67.21%
with a margin of error of 3.82%. The performance of the participants in experiment 3 did just as
well as experiment 2; with the accuracy at 64.78% with a margin of error of 3.69%. Participants
in experiment 4, even though the experiment was similar to experiment 2, performance was no
better than chance.
In their discussion they concluded that the focal attention in short periods of time were
not sufficient enough to gain a short-term memory of the scenes. Results of the experiment also
show that target detection, engagement, or processing has a strong, non-stimulus influence on
memory formation. Experiments 2 and 3 show that temporal novelty of the target letter task
and the auditory task suggest that a behaviorally relevant point in time sensation was triggered.
This is also proven by experiment 4 where the target letters were now deemed unimportant
leaving participants doing no better than chance.
There might be some limitations that were imbedded into the experiment through hidden
variables that one could not account for since there is very little known on the subject. Overall
they did their best to account for as many variables they could come up with.