Short-term memory for movement in photographs: A developmental study.
Item
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Title
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Short-term memory for movement in photographs: A developmental study.
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Identifier
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AAI9029932
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identifier
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9029932
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Creator
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Futterweit, Lorelle Ruth.
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Contributor
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Harry Beilin
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Date
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1990
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental
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Abstract
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A series of studies investigated a proposed picture-memory phenomenon reported by Freyd (1983), later termed "representational momentum" (Freyd & Finke, 1984), in which adults' short-term memory for movement in photographs is distorted slightly forward in the direction of the implied motion. In the present studies, a reaction time paradigm was used to determine whether children exhibit the same memory errors and whether there are developmental differences in short-term memory for movement in photographs. In Experiment 1, third grade, fifth grade, and graduate students were presented with a photograph of an action scene and asked to remember it. Subjects were then shown a second photograph that was either the "same as" or "different from" the first. Of the "different" photographs, half were photographs of the same scene but taken slightly later in time ("forward" order), while the other half were photographs taken slightly earlier in time ("backward" order). In addition to age, the present experiments assessed the effect of different directions of motion, interstimulus intervals, and pictorial movement cues on recognition memory. Repeated Measures ANOVAS were used to analyze the reaction time and error rate data. Subjects took significantly longer to correctly determine that a second photograph was different from the first when photograph pairs were presented in "backward", rather than "forward", order, contrary to Freyd's (1983) finding. In Experiment 2, however, the picture-memory phenomenon was replicated when using a range of real-world time separations between photograph pairs. That is, subjects made the greatest number of errors on those photograph pairs separated by only one frame "forward", indicating that memory for the action in the first photograph was distorted in the direction of the implied movement. No forward memory errors occurred when "still" photographs were used in Experiment 3. Thus, the picture-memory phenomenon is specific to photographs that depict movement. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the representational momentum hypothesis and theories of photographic comprehension.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
