Why Is Memory So Good and So Bad?: Scientific American

Why Is Memory So Good and So Bad?: Scientific American: In a recent review, researchers at Harvard and MIT argue that the critical factor is how meaningful the remembered images are—whether the content of the images you see connects to pre-existing knowledge about them. In the Zhang & Luck experiment, you try to remember meaningless, unrelated colors, and so no connection with stored knowledge is made; it’s as if the white board is scrubbed clean before you get a chance to copy the scribbles into your notebook. But in the Konkle et al. experiment, you see images of recognizable scenes that you already have meaningful knowledge about—such as where the roller coaster is likely to be located relative to the ground. This prior knowledge changes how these images are processed, allowing thousands of them to be transferred from the whiteboard of short-term memory into the bank vault of long-term memory, where they are stored with remarkable detail.