Assessing Human Performance on Scene Recognition and the Likelihood of Erroneous Recognition of Famous and Non-famous Landmarks

Allen, Wade, Bowman, Caitlin, College of Letters & Science, Mentor, Poster Presentation, Psychology, School and College, Student

Wade Allen, “Assessing Human Performance on Scene Recognition and the Likelihood of Erroneous Recognition of Famous and Non-famous Landmarks”
Mentor: Caitlin Bowman, Psychology
Poster #24

How we form new memories is of particular interest within the field of cognitive neuroscience. One key question is whether it is easier to remember items that you have prior knowledge about (e.g., Big Ben) compared to similar items that you are unfamiliar with (e.g., Clock of Erbil). As a first step to understanding the effects of prior knowledge on memory formation, the present study investigated the recognizability of various landmarks. Half of the scenes were intended to be highly recognizable (famous), but the other half were chosen to look similar to the famous landmarks while being much less recognizable (non-famous). The present study sought to determine the recognizability of each famous landmark and how often participants incorrectly recognized non-famous landmarks as their famous counterparts. One hundred sixteen primarily young adult participants (M = 24.58, SD = 9.09) viewed images of 16 landmarks (4 different variations per landmark) in randomized order through a Qualtrics survey and were asked to name each one. Preliminary results revealed that famous landmarks were significantly more recognizable than non-famous ones, and a significant number of participants mistook non-famous landmarks for their famous counterparts. Additionally, showing participants a landmark’s non-famous counterpart first resulted in more mistaken recognitions. Further, half of the landmarks were natural (e.g., Grand Canyon) while the other half were man-made structures (e.g., Big Ben). We found that man-made landmarks were more recognizable than natural ones. Thus, we have confirmed that the famous scenes were more recognizable than the non-famous scenes, with some susceptibility to confusion across related scenes and poorer recognizability of natural landscapes. In the future, we will compare these results with those of older adults who may be more susceptible to erroneous recognition due to an increased tendency to use general features rather than specific individual features to recall past information.