Walker P, Hitch G J, Dewhurst S A, Whiteley H E, Brandimonte M A
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, England.
Mem Cognit. 1997 Jul;25(4):484-91. doi: 10.3758/bf03201124.
Two experiments investigated the differential representation of the figure and ground of a picture in visual short-term and long-term memory. It is known (Hitch, Brandimonte, & Walker, 1995) that subjects find it more difficult to combine mental images of two separately presented pictures in order to identify a novel form when the two pictures are incongruent in color (i.e., when a black-on-white line drawing has to be combined with a white-on-black drawing). In the present experiments, the figures were depicted in solid form to allow color congruity to be varied independently for figure and ground. Results showed a clear impairment in image combination when the to-be-combined figures were incongruent in color (black-on-gray and white-on-gray) but not when their grounds were incongruently colored (gray-on-black and gray-on-white). In this way, image combination was seen to be supported by a representation of the object depicted in the picture rather than by a literal representation of the picture itself (i.e., a pictorial code). In line with previous findings, the same representation was seen to support image combination based on short-term memory (Experiment 1) and long-term memory (Experiment 2), provided that in the latter case verbal recoding was precluded. When verbal recoding was allowed, image combination based on long-term memory was insensitive to color congruity, implying the involvement of a more abstract structural representation.
两项实验研究了图片中图形与背景在视觉短期记忆和长期记忆中的差异表征。众所周知（希契、布兰迪蒙特和沃克，1995年），当两张分别呈现的图片颜色不一致时（即当黑白线条画必须与白黑线条画组合时），受试者会发现更难将这两张图片的心理图像组合起来以识别一种新形式。在本实验中，图形以实体形式呈现，以便图形和背景的颜色一致性可以独立变化。结果表明，当待组合的图形颜色不一致（黑底灰和白底灰）时，图像组合明显受损，但当它们的背景颜色不一致（灰底黑和灰底白）时则不然。通过这种方式，可以看出图像组合是由图片中所描绘物体的表征支持的，而不是由图片本身的文字表征（即图像代码）支持的。与先前的研究结果一致，只要在后一种情况下排除言语重新编码，相同的表征就被认为支持基于短期记忆（实验1）和长期记忆（实验2）的图像组合。当允许言语重新编码时，基于长期记忆的图像组合对颜色一致性不敏感，这意味着涉及一种更抽象的结构表征。
