Memory Psychophysics for Areas: Distortion in Natural Memory of a School Campus

Abstract

As the perceived magnitude of a stimulus is related by power function t o the physical magnitude, the remembered visual areas and length are also related by power function to the actual areas and length. The main purpose of this study is to examine whether the power law is also applicable to remembered areas in natural environment, e.g., a school campus, and to its old memory. 31 junior high students and seven university undergraduates who graduated from the same junior high school seven years before were asked to draw a layout of the school campus. The areas of the school facilities and field, and other features of drawings such as the number of recalled facilities and objects, and direction of the sketch were assessed. Analysis showed that the areas remembered by the junior high subjects followed the power law while those remembered by the undergraduates did not. The divergence of exponents observed for undergraduates was accounted for by reconstruction by schema.