Sophia Taavao, “The Impact of General Knowledge on Recognition of Famous and Non-Famous Landmarks”
Mentor: Caitlin Bowman, Psychology, Letters & Science (College of)
Poster #104
General knowledge may help in forming new memories by providing additional meaning to a to-be-remembered item. However, it may also hinder memory if we fail to notice the unique features of the current experience. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of general knowledge in encoding new memories. We created a memory task that asks participants to remember a series of scene images. To manipulate general knowledge, some of the images are of famous locations (e.g., Big Ben, Grand Canyon) and others are of non-famous landmarks similar to the famous landmarks, but not as recognizable (e.g., Clock of Erbil, Copper Canyon). During the testing phase, participants see a series of images. Some will be the exact image they saw during the study phase, while others will be different pictures of the same location. Participants are instructed to respond whether they have seen the image during the study phase. We plan to recruit 30 cognitively healthy younger adults (ages 18-30) from UW-Milwaukee to participate in the study. We hypothesize that participants will show enhanced memory of famous relative to non-famous stimuli. Further, the stimulus set includes natural landscapes and scenes with manmade structures. Previous data showed that the famous scenes with manmade structures were more recognizable than natural landscapes. We thus hypothesize that memory for famous manmade landmarks will be better than memory of famous natural landmarks. Together, these findings would support the idea that having previous knowledge can help us encode new memory.