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People typically perform well on memory tests for pictures, even when the test requires memory for visual details of individual objects. Recently, Varakin and Loschky (2010) demonstrated that although people perform well on memory tests for details of object appearance, people perform at chance on memory tests for the conjunction of object appearance and scene viewpoint. The current experiments replicate these basic findings, but without the use of the cover task used by Varakin and Loschky (2010). Thus, the failure to recognize the conjunction of object appearance and viewpoint is unlikely to be due to interference caused by the cover task during encoding.
Humans possess a remarkable ability to recognize previously viewed pictures. In the most dramatic demonstrations of this ability, observers study thousands of pictures and are later able to discriminate studied from non-studied pictures on the basis of visual details alone at rates far exceeding chance (e.g., Brady, Konkle, Alvarez & Oliva, 2008; Konkle, Brady, Alvarez & Oliva, 2010a, 2010b; Standing, 1973; Standing, Conezio & Haber, 1970). What is the nature of the representations underlying picture recognition? Intuition might suggest that picture-like, iconic representations must underlie performance on picture recognition tests, especially when the recognition test requires observers to remember subtle visual details. However, it is widely agreed that representations in visual long-term memory (VLTM) lack the metric precision of picturelike, iconic representations (e.g., Hollingworth, 2008; Intraub, 1997; Konkle et al., 2010a, 2010b; Simons & Levin, 1997; Varakin & Loschky, 2010). Thus, research on the nature of representations in VLTM seems clear on two points: 1) visual memory contains detailed information about the visual appearance of objects from previously viewed pictures but 2), not as many details as would iconic representations. However, extant research is less clear on how information in VLTM is organized in comparison to the picture from which the information was originally obtained. After all, pictures contain a variety of features that are organized in a particular way. It may be that representations underlying performance on picture recognition tests lack picture-like metric precision, but retain picture-like organization. Does VLTM maintain representations whose features are functionally organized in much the same way as the visual features were organized in the picture, albeit without the precision of iconic representation? The current...