Detailed Visual Memory Capacity Is Present Early - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Detailed Visual Memory Capacity Is Present Early
in Childhood

1
Katrina Ferrara

1
, Sarah Furlong

, Soojin Park

1,2

, and Barbara Landau

1Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins Universität

2Abteilung für Psychologie, Yonsei University

Schlüsselwörter:
memory ﬁdelity

visual memory, cognitive development, memory capacity, Objekt

recognition,

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ABSTRAKT

Previous studies have shown that adults are able to remember more than 1,000 images with
great detail. Jedoch, little is known about the development of this visual capacity, nor its
presence early in life. This study tests the level of detail of young children’s memory for a
large number of items, adapting the method of Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, and Oliva (2008).
Four- and six-year-old children were shown more than 100 images of everyday objects. Sie
were then tested for recognition of familiar items in a binary decision task. The identity of the
foil test item was manipulated in three conditions (Category, Exemplar, and State). Children
demonstrated high accuracy across all conditions, remembering not only the basic-level
category (Category), but also unique details (Exemplar), and information about position and
arrangement of parts (Zustand). These ﬁndings demonstrate that children spontaneously encode
a high degree of visual detail. Early in life, visual memory exhibits high ﬁdelity and extends
over a large set of items.

EINFÜHRUNG

The capacity to form and retrieve visual representations of objects is a central aspect of hu-
man cognition. Preserving detailed aspects of these object representations holds functional
importance for everyday activities: We may want to remember which kitchen implement had
been washed (a spoon or a spatula?), which particular category member was used in a recipe
(serrated knife or a smooth blade?), or in what particular state a given individual item was left
(toaster oven open or closed?). In support of these commonplace tasks, studies have shown
that the information capacity of visual memory in adults is surprisingly detailed as well as
impressively large (Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, & Oliva, 2008; Konkle, Brady, Alvarez, & Oliva,
2010).

Is this capacity the outcome of adults’ massive exposure to objects and their regular
engagement in tasks that require object discrimination based on subtle differences? Or does
it reﬂect a signature characteristic of the human visual memory system, present even without
lifelong practice? Wenn ja, this capacity should be present in children, despite their more limited
need to remember detailed differences among objects. Little work has been done to investigate
the overall capacity and level of detail inherent in children’s visual memory, and whether the

Katrina Ferrara is now at the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, Department of Neurology, Georgetown
Universität, and Sarah Furlong is in the Clinical and Cognitive Psychology Graduate Program, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Park and Landau contributed equally.

Zitat: Ferrara, K., Furlong, S., Park,
S., & Landauer, B. (2017). Detailed Visual
Memory Capacity Is Present Early in
Childhood. Open Mind: Discoveries
in Cognitive Science, 2(1), 14–25.
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00014

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00014

Supplemental Materials:
https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00014

Erhalten: 22 Januar 2017
Akzeptiert: 24 August 2017

Konkurrierende Interessen: The authors
declare that they have no conﬂicts of
interest with respect to their authorship
or the publication of this article.

Korrespondierender Autor:
Katrina Ferrara
ferrara@cogsci.jhu.edu

Urheberrechte ©: © 2017
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Veröffentlicht unter Creative Commons
Namensnennung 4.0 International
(CC BY 4.0) Lizenz

Die MIT-Presse

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

capacity itself undergoes developmental change. These questions are explored in the present
research by testing the extent of children’s visual memory for images of objects.

Existing research shows that adults have an impressive ability to remember previously
viewed images. A seminal study in the 1970s found that after viewing 10,000 scenes for only
5 seconds each, Teilnehmer waren 83% correct in identifying which of two images they had
seen (Standing, 1973). Further work has shown that, even after several hours, adults can
remember details of particular objects they saw, suggesting that their memory stores more
than simply the gist of the image (Wolfe, 1998). Zum Beispiel, adults are able to distinguish
between a target object and similar distractors that belong to the same basic-level category
(2008)
(Castelhano & Henderson, 2005; Hollingworth, 2004). More recently, Brady et al.
exposed adults to a large number of objects, and then tested their memory using a forced-
choice task in which the identity of the foil was carefully manipulated. Participants ﬁrst viewed
images of 2,500 Objekte. At test, they were shown two images, only one of which they had
seen before. The target image was paired with either an object from a different category (z.B.,
a sofa vs. a banana), an object from the same basic-level category (z.B., a blue train vs. A
green train), or the same object in a different state (z.B., an upright bucket vs. the same bucket
on its side). Across all three conditions, performance was quite high (92%, 88%, Und 87%,
jeweils). These ﬁndings show that adults can store thousands of object representations
(Brady et al., 2008; Konkle et al., 2010).

In contrast to the breadth of research in the adult literature, few studies have probed
the nature of visual memory capacity in childhood. Some have used visual recognition tests
to assess children’s memory (z.B., Luciana & Nelson, 1998; Rose, Feldman, Futterweit, &
Jankowski, 1997), but these studies have typically focused on the ability to identify a famil-
iar target among a small set of alternatives (z.B., four items). Standardized measures include
assessments of visual memory, but these are not often normed below 5 Jahre alt (z.B., Die
Benton Visual Retention Test; Sivan, 1992), or only focus on speciﬁc categories (z.B., faces
or shapes; Test of Memory and Learning; Reynolds & Bigler, 1994; Children’s Memory Scale;
Cohen, 1997). Another widely used tool focuses on recall of a single complex ﬁgure (d.h.,
the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure; Osterrieth, 1944; Rey, 1941), and performance is mea-
sured by having children copy the ﬁgure by drawing (z.B., Akshoomoff & Stiles, 1995). Das
may underestimate the amount of visual detail that can be remembered, especially in children
younger than 6 Jahre (Frisk, Jakobson, Ritter, & Robertson, 2005).

Could young children’s visual memories be as ﬁne-grained as those of adults? Or do
children begin with coarser visual memory representations, which then develop in level of
detail? Visual recognition memory in infants has been studied extensively (for review, see Rose,
Feldman, & Jankowski, 2004).
In terms of short-term iconic visual memory, 6-month-olds
demonstrate a 5-object memory capacity, which nearly matches adults’ 6-object capacity
(Blaser & Kaldy, 2010). Additional evidence suggests that infants retain at least some degree
of perceptual detail in object representations over longer delays. At 5–6 months of age, infants
are able to recognize, after a delay of two days, which of two abstract patterns they had seen
(Fagan, 1973). Three-month-olds demonstrate recognition of faces that they have been habitu-
ated to after a delay of 24 hours (Pascalis, de Haan, Nelson, & de Schonen, 1998). Research us-
ing the deferred imitation paradigm, in which participants reproduce actions using props (z.B.,
Meltzoff, 1985), has shown that infants as young as 14 months are capable of remembering
In
actions based on a single observation experience (Bauer, Larkina, & Deocampo, 2010).

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

work on episodic memory (Tulving, 1983), 2- to 4-year-olds exhibit impressive abilities to
remember past events, even after a delay of 24 hours (Simcock & Hayne, 2003). Children as
young as 15 months demonstrate episodic-like memory for past events (Newcombe, Balcomb,
Ferrara, Hansen, & Koski, 2014), and this ability further improves during middle childhood
(Ghetti, Mirandola, Angelini, Corndoli, & Ciaramelli, 2011). Collectively these studies suggest
the possibility that visual memory capacity could be well-developed early in life. Jedoch,
much of this work has focused on infants and to our knowledge no study has yet attempted
to measure the sheer capacity of visual memory in childhood.

In the present work, we draw upon the experiment of Brady et al. (2008), which leverages
subtle differences in stimuli to provide insights about the capacity of adult visual memory. Der
current work tests 4- and 6-year-olds’ memory for a large set of images (116). We aim to gain
a better understanding of children’s memory capacity by pushing both the number of items
to be remembered (quantity), as well as the speciﬁcity of information remembered per item
(ﬁdelity) (Konkle et al., 2010). As numerous studies have shown that adults have a massive
capacity for visual information, it is possible that this is a fundamental ability present early in
life. Wenn ja, we predict that visual memory in children will show the signature characteristics of
the mature system (d.h., detailed memory for a large set of items).

METHOD

Teilnehmer

Forty-eight children participated in this study. They were divided into two groups: 4-Jahr-
olds (n = 24, Durchschnittsalter = 4;6, age range = 4;0–4;11, SD = 0;3, 12 females) and 6-year-olds
(n = 24, Durchschnittsalter = 6;6, age range = 6;0–6;11, SD = 0;4, 12 females). Two additional
included in the subsequent analyses due to non-
children were tested but were not
participation (n = 1) or equipment failure (n = 1). The study was approved by the local Insti-
tutional Review Board. Children provided verbal assent for their participation and caregivers
provided written informed consent. All participants had parent-reported normal or corrected-
to-normal vision. Children were recruited via local parent groups and preschools. At the end
of the study, children chose a small toy to take home.

Stimuli and Design

Stimuli were drawn from the image stimulus set of Brady et al. (2008), which includes objects
from distinct basic-level categories in order to minimize conceptual interference (Konkle et al.,
2010; Koutstaal & Schacter, 1997). In some cases particular items were revised in order to
be recognizable to young children (z.B., a cupcake instead of a contact lens case). Diese
revised stimuli were gathered via Internet searches using Google Image Search. The complete
set of stimuli is available on our website (Ferrara, Furlong, Park, & Landauer, 2017A). Sample
stimuli are shown in Figure 1.

Within each age group, eight children were assigned to one of

three conditions
(Category, Exemplar, or State). These conditions were modeled on those of Brady et al. (2008)
and systematically varied the level of detail required for accurate performance at test. Im
Category condition, a previously seen item was paired with a new item that was from a dif-
ferent basic-level category (z.B., a baby doll vs. a phone). In this condition, remembering the
basic-level category of the previously seen item is sufﬁcient to choose the correct image. In

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

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Figur 1. Nine example test pairs presented during the two-alternative forced-choice task for
the three conditions (Category, Exemplar, and State). Es gab 50 test pairs per condition. Der
complete stimulus set is available at http://parklab.johnshopkins.edu/IMAGE_SETS_2.html.

OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science

Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

the Exemplar condition, a previously seen item was paired with a new item from the same
basic-level category (z.B., a purple backpack vs. a yellow backpack). Accuracy in this con-
dition would require remembering the particular item that had been seen; remembering only
the basic-level category of the previously seen item would result in chance performance at
test. zuletzt, in the State condition, the previously seen item was paired with a new item that
portrayed the same object but in a different pose or state (z.B., a whole lemon vs. a sliced
In this condition, memory for just the category or even the speciﬁc identity of the
lemon).
object would be inadequate to make the correct choice.

Verfahren

Images were shown for 3 seconds each.

Children were seated at a laptop computer at a comfortable viewing distance. The study in-
volved two parts: familiarization (on average, 15.35 minutes) and test (on average, 20.10 min-
utes).1 During familiarization, children viewed a continuous stream of 116 images on a
In order to maintain children’s
computer screen.
attention, a one-back repetition detection task was used (called “catch the sneaky picture”).
Children were instructed to monitor the stream of images for “sneaky” (repeated) Bilder
that “took two turns in a row.” They indicated that they saw a “sneaky one” by clapping.
Whenever they identiﬁed a repeated picture they earned a sticker. Children achieved 100%
accuracy in detecting the repeated image. Eight items in the stream were designated as re-
peats, and none of the repeated items were used at test. Repeat images were inserted into
the stream randomly, with the constraint that at least three nonrepeated images must inter-
vene. The remaining 100 nonrepeated images were presented in a randomized order for each
participant.

Children were not instructed to remember the objects they would see. Eher, Sie
were simply told to “watch for the sneaky picture.” This aspect of the procedure differs
from that of Brady et al.
(2010), in which adult participants were
explicitly informed at the start of the study that they should try to remember all the items
they saw. We opted not to explicitly instruct participants in this way, due to concerns
about variable use of metacognitive strategies by children of this age (Bjorklund, Dukes, &
Braun, 2009).

(2008) and Konkle et al.

At test, participants completed 50 trials of a two-alternative forced choice decision.
Each item that was viewed during familiarization was paired with a new image, and par-
ticipants were asked to indicate which one they had seen before. After every 10 completed
test trials children earned a sticker. They were permitted to proceed at their own pace. Der
identity of the foil image was determined by the condition assigned to the particular participant
(Category, Exemplar, or State). The test trials were presented in a randomized order for each
participant.

As in Brady et al.

(2008), Die 50 pairs of images used to test each condition remained
consistent across participants (z.B., in the Category condition, the leaf was always paired
with the paint box, the doll was always paired with the phone, usw.). Within each pair, Die

1 Durations are given as averages because children were permitted to proceed at their own pace. No individual

participant exceeded +/– 4 minutes of the given familiarization and test durations.

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

image assigned to be familiarized and the image assigned to be the test foil were counter-
balanced across participants (z.B., some participants were familiarized to the leaf and saw
it paired with the paint box at test, while others were familiarized to the paint box and saw
it paired with the leaf at test). Der 50 familiarized images that were later tested were dis-
tributed evenly throughout the entire stream of images during the familiarization portion of
the study.

ERGEBNISSE

Children in both age groups were highly accurate on the forced-choice decision at test
In the Category condition, the mean percent correct
across all three conditions (Figur 2).
for 4-year-olds was 95.00% (SE = 0.86%) and the mean percent correct for 6-year-olds was
98.00% (SE = 0.23%). In the Exemplar condition, the mean percent correct for 4-year-olds was
94.00% (SE = 1.00%), and the mean percent correct for 6-year-olds was 91.13% (SE = 1.17%).
In the State condition, the mean percent correct for 4-year-olds was 86.25% (SE = 0.85%) Und
the mean percent correct for 6-year-olds was 87.75% (SE = 0.99%). No gender differences in
accuracy were found for either the 4-year-olds, two-tailed t(22) = –0.35, p = .73, Cohen’s d =
–0.14, or 6-year-olds, T(22) = 0.30, p = .77, Cohen’s d = 0.12.

Participant accuracy (percent correct) was submitted to a 3 (Condition: Category, Exem-
plar, Zustand) X 2 (Alter: 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds) analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Condition and
Age as between-subjects factors. This analysis yielded a main effect of condition, F(2, 42) =
7.05, p = .002, ηp
= .25, indicating that performance was affected by the level of detail

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Figur 2. Percent correct in the Category, Exemplar, and State conditions for 4-year-olds and
6-year-olds. Error bars reﬂect one standard error of the mean (SE). Chance performance (50%) Ist
indicated by the dashed line.

OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science

Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

required to remember the familiar item at test. The main effect of Age was nonsigniﬁcant,
F(1, 42) = .08, p = .78, ηp
= .002, as was the interaction between Age and Condition,
2
F(2, 42) = .69, p = .51, ηp
= .03. Daher, performance did not signiﬁcantly improve with age,
and the different conditions did not differentially affect accuracy for 4-year-olds versus 6-year-
olds. Analyses using the Scheffé post hoc criterion for signiﬁcance showed that the Category
condition did not elicit signiﬁcantly higher accuracy than the Exemplar condition, F(2, 42) =
1.57, p = .32, 95% conﬁdence interval, CI = [−.03, .10]. The difference between accuracy
in the Exemplar and State conditions was also not signiﬁcant, F(2, 42) = 2.45, p = .10, 95%
CI = [−.01, .12]. Comparison of the Category and State conditions, Jedoch, showed that the
Category condition elicited signiﬁcantly higher accuracy than State, F(2, 42) = 6.97, p = .002,
95% CI = [−.03, .16]. The greater accuracy in the Category condition compared to State stands
as a replication of Brady et al.’s (2008) ﬁndings with adults. This indicates that both children and
adults were able to store and retrieve fewer items when speciﬁc states had to be remembered,
compared to simply remembering the object’s category.

One possibility is that the visual similarity of the item pairs in the three conditions
varied such that poorer performance in the State condition was due to higher visual simi-
larity between targets and their foils. We used a phase correlation algorithm to quantify the
relative visual similarity between two test images. We found that the State condition had the
highest overall interitem similarity, but higher image similarity values for speciﬁc item pairs
did not predict behavioral performance in terms of accuracy (see Supplemental Figure 1 Und
Supplemental Table 1; Ferrara, Furlong, Park, & Landauer, 2017B).

We also considered the potential effect of the number of intervening items (“item delay”)
on performance at test. Each participant was exposed to the 100 familiarization images in a
randomized order, und das 50 test pairs were also presented in a randomized order. From these
orders we computed the number of intervening items between the point at which an item was
viewed during familiarization and when it was viewed again at test.
If item delay affected
accuracy, this would be reﬂected by a decrease in performance with the increasing number
of intervening items. No effects of item delay were found (see Supplemental Figure 2; Ferrara
et al., 2017B).

Although the omnibus ANOVA did not reveal a main effect of age, we further explored
potential age effects by conducting linear regression analyses to determine whether exact age
(measured in terms of years, months, and days) signiﬁcantly predicted accuracy at test. Diese
analyses showed no signiﬁcant effects of age for any of the conditions (see Supplemental
Figur 3 and Supplemental Table 2; Ferrara et al., 2017B). We also considered the number
of test pairs for which children did not obtain 100% accuracy in each condition (see Supple-
mental Figure 4; Ferrara et al., 2017B). Four- and six-year-olds differed only in the category
condition, where 4-year-olds had signiﬁcantly more test items that fell below 100% accuracy,
χ2

(2, n = 100) = 6.45, p = .01.

Given that both 4- and 6-year-olds are clearly storing a large amount of visual detail
in order to achieve such high levels of performance, we sought to quantify the capacity of
children’s visual memory. As noted by Brady et al. (2008), true estimates of memory capacity
take into account not only the number of items stored, but also the amount of information that
must be remembered per item. To quantify memory capacity, Brady et al.
(2008) analyzed
their adult data using a model by Landauer (1986). This model is not based on visual similarity,
and instead assigns each picture a random code (b bits long) and calculates the number of bits

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

required to correctly make a decision about which image has been seen and which has not.
Errors occur when two images are mistakenly assigned the same code. The model provides an
estimate of the optimal code length (bits per item) based on the total number of items in the
image set and the percentage correct on a two-alternative forced-choice memory test.2 Adults
in Brady et al. (2008) erhalten 93% in the Novel condition (in our experiment called the
Category condition). Using Landauer’s model, Brady et al.
found that the optimal code for
this performance would require 13.8 bits per item. We applied Landauer’s model to our own
data to see if a comparable result would be obtained, despite the fact that the image set of the
present study is much smaller and children could well have a capacity for far fewer bits than
Erwachsene. For our Category condition, with an image set of 100 items and 96.5% correct (for all
children tested), the optimal code for this performance would require 10.43 bits per item. Das
is close to the number of bits per item estimated by Brady et al. for their adult participants.
As Brady et al. notiert, their own empirically derived value is comparable with estimates of
10–14 bits needed to model adult performance in previous large-scale experiments with adults
(Landauer, 1986). It is even more striking that the estimated bits per item for our child data
falls within this range.

We also modeled the Exemplar and State data following the assumptions laid out by
Brady et al. (2008), which assume a hierarchical organization of memory, where the category
bits appear ﬁrst and additional bits of information then specify the exemplar or state of the
item in that category. The exemplar bits are assumed to be nonoverlapping with the state bits
in the hierarchy. Zum Beispiel, as Brady et al. (2008) assumed, two additional bits are required
to code a particular exemplar (12.43 bits per item, in comparison to 10.43 bits per item to
code a particular category) and two more are required to code a particular state (14.43 bits
per item). Given that the State condition will require the highest number of bits per item, Wir
can use that number as an estimate of the representational capacity of children’s visual mem-
ory, assuming that all items are coded by the optimal set of features. That estimate is a massive
number ≈ 22,000 (2
).3 This analysis does not tell us the true visual information capacity of
the system (Brady et al., 2008), but serves as a formal demonstration of the impressively
large memory capacity that must exist to encode the many unique exemplar and state fea-
tures and obtain the high rates of accuracy observed for both children and adults. Gesamt,
these results point to the remarkable ability of 4- and 6-year-olds to represent ﬁne-grained de-
tails of previously seen items, encompassing variation across objects in a single basic-level
category, and variation within an individual object in that category.

14.43

DISKUSSION

The present study demonstrates impressive visual memory performance by children as young
als 4 Jahre alt, both in terms of the large number of items and the level of detail required
for recognition. Children showed accurate recognition not only for the basic-level category
of the item they saw (Category), but also for unique featural details (Exemplar), and speciﬁc
information about position and arrangement of parts (Zustand). As was found previously with
Erwachsene, performance declined slightly in the State condition (Brady et al., 2008). Memory

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2 The number of bits is related to memory performance by the following equation: b = –log2 [1 – (2p –1)

1/N

where p is the percentage correct and n is the number of items in memory.

3 Two objects (target and foil), mit 14.43 bits/object.

OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science

Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

performance between 4- and 6-year-olds was largely similar. Whether the same levels of per-
Form (and hence estimated visual memory capacity) holds for children younger or older
than this age range awaits further study. Gesamt, these ﬁndings demonstrate that the ﬁdelity of
children’s visual memory shows the signature characteristics of the mature system—detailed
and highly accurate visual memory that extends over a large set of items.

This work highlights clear developmental precursors to the massive visual memory
capacity that has been shown in studies of adults. Um sicher zu sein, those studies included more
als 1,000 images while the present includes only 116. Auch so, the abbreviated constraints of
the current study show that children retain details for a large number of
Artikel, seen
only for 3 seconds each. The estimated number of bits per item based on Landauer’s model
(Landauer, 1986) was comparable to that which Brady et al. (2008) found for adults. This ﬁnd-
ing is surprising, given the large developmental differences in other aspects of memory (z.B.,
Arbeitsgedächtnis [Gathercole, 1999; Hale, Bronik, & Fry, 1997; Luciana & Nelson, 1998]
and episodic memory [Brainerd, Holliday, & Reyna, 2004; DeMaster & Ghetti, 2013; Lloyd,
Doydum, & Newcombe, 2009]). Vor allem, high levels of accuracy were observed even when
children were not instructed to remember anything about the images they saw—during fa-
miliarization they were fully engaged in the “catch the sneaky picture” game. This indicates
that explicit strategies are unlikely to account for performance. These data also suggest that
the retrieval and comparison processes necessary to successfully perform the two-alternative
forced-choice test are relatively well-developed in young children. Außerdem, it is unlikely
that children were able to linguistically encode nuanced differences among the stimuli within
the brief duration for which each image was displayed. Gemeinsam, these ﬁndings indicate
that the storage of ﬁne-grained visual information is a fairly automatic and rapid process in
early childhood.

In our study, children showed exceptional memory capacity for even the subtle visual
differences presented in the State condition. This observation is consistent with ﬁndings from
infant studies, which indicate that object heterogeneity can affect memory performance. Wann
habituated to two objects that differ in color, pattern, and texture, 7-month-olds respond to
a change in the number of objects present. But when habituated to two identical objects,
infants fail to respond to a change in object number (Feigenson & Carey, 2005). This suggests
that in infancy, the distinctiveness of visual detail is an important element toward forming
separate representations for multiple objects, which holds repercussions for further cognitive
Verarbeitung, such as representation of numerosity. Additional work has shown that when the
perceptual contrast between objects is highly salient, infants show improved working memory
Kapazität (Zosh & Feigenson, 2015). The current ﬁndings expand upon this developmental
account; here we observe high levels of accuracy, even when interitem similarity is quite
hoch. Building upon the attention to visual detail that they demonstrate as infants, 4-Jahr-
olds can form distinct and enduring object representations based on slight variations in visual
appearance.

It is important to note that although object memory is highly detailed and accurate in chil-
dren and adults, this does not hold for other types of visual stimuli, such as images of scenes.
On scene memory tasks, both children and adults make consistent errors that are not faithful
to the original stimulus. Research has shown that children as young as 4 years of age demon-
strate the phenomenon of boundary extension (false memory beyond the edges of a view of
a scene; Kreindel & Intraub, 2016), which has also been shown in adults (Intraub, 2010;

OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science

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Visual Memory Capacity in Childhood Ferrara et al.

Intraub & Richardson, 1989). Daher, the highly detailed nature of children’s visual memory
reported here supports aspects of object recognition, but may not extend to other cognitive
functions, such as scene representation.

These ﬁndings suggest several avenues of further investigation. Erste, what is the visual
memory capacity of infants? Could it be within the same range shown by the 4- and 6-year-
olds in our study? It may be possible to answer this question by using measures such as looking
time to determine whether items from a relatively large set of objects are later recognized as
different from foils that differ in terms of category, exemplar, and/or state. Zweite, do the
effects we’ve observed persist over longer periods of time? To ﬁnd out, one could test chil-
dren’s ability to recognize foils over delays of hours, or even days. Capacity could be further
investigated by increasing the set size above 100 Bilder. The present data suggest that chil-
dren might obtain high levels of accuracy on even larger sets of images, as analyses of item
delay did not reveal any decrease in accuracy as the number of intervening items increased.

zuletzt, this study raises questions about the neural basis of the ability to form and maintain
visual object representations. This work could be expanded to tasks that include neuroimaging
Maßnahmen, which could further our understanding of the maturation and functioning of key
regions that underlie human memory, such as the dentate gyrus and hippocampus for pattern
separation and completion (Bakker, Kirwan, Müller, & Stark, 2008; Hunsaker & Kesner, 2013;
Jabès & Nelson, 2015).
In sum, our ﬁndings demonstrate that children possess impressive
visual memory capacity even early in life, and provide intriguing avenues for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are very grateful to all the families who took part in this study. We thank Matthew Levine
for his technical assistance in developing the experimental MATLAB scripts.

This research was supported by an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Trainee-
ship through the National Science Foundation (DGE 0549379 to K. Ferrara), a T32 Postdoctoral
Research Fellowship through the National Institutes of Health (5T32 HD 046388 to K. Ferrara),
a Johns Hopkins University Provost Undergraduate Research Award (to S. Furlong), a grant from
the National Institutes of Health (NINDS RO1 050876 to B. Landauer), and a grant from the
Nationale Gesundheitsinstitute (NIH R01 EY026042 to S. Park).

BEITRÄGE DES AUTORS

SP and BL contributed equally to the research design, data analysis, and writing of the paper.
All authors contributed to the study concept and design. Testing and data collection were
performed by KF and SF. KF and SF performed data analysis and interpretation under the super-
vision of BL and SP. KF and SF drafted the manuscript, and BL and SP provided critical revisions.
All authors approved the ﬁnal version of the manuscript for submission.

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