Search without building memories: Failure of visual recall for easy search tasks in natural scenes

Abstract

It is well established that search tasks within natural scenes induce the encoding of information about the scene and the target, particularly when the scene is complex or repeated. In this study, we asked whether searches always necessitate memory encoding by using a simple search task to minimize incentives for incidental encoding followed immediately by a visual recall task. Participants repeatedly searched for and located an easily-detected item in novel scenes for numerous trials before being unexpectedly prompted to draw the entire scene (Experiment 1) or the object that they had been locating (Experiment 2) directly after being shown a search image. The similarity of the drawings to the original information was assessed by naïve raters. Surprise- trial drawings of the scene and search target were both poorly recognizable as representations of the scene / target itself. The same drawers produced highly recognizable scenes and objects on the next trial when they had an expectation to draw the image. Experiment 3 further showed that the poor surprise trial memory could not merely be attributed to interference caused by the unexpected drawing prompt. Our findings replicate Attribute Amnesia (Chen & Wyble, 2015) using the method of visual recall through drawing: it is possible to locate a target without creating a memory of it or the scene that it was in, even if attended to just a few seconds prior. This disconnection between attention and memory might reflect a fundamental property of cognitive computations designed to optimize task performance and minimize resource use.