Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The present study addresses the issue of whether visual information is retained well or not, using the Nickerson and Adams (1979) familiar task of recalling a U.S. penny. Although Nickerson and Adams ' findings suggested poor retention of visual detail, earlier recognition memory studies suggested very good retention. A n unfamiliar liberty dime was used to assess the durability of a one-minute study period for an unfamiliar coin. Recall |}erformance on the unfamiliar dime was better than recall performance on the familiar penny even when the test on the dime was delayed for one week. The order in which recall of the penny or dime occurred significantly affected performance with the prior unaided recall of the penny enhancing the subsequent recall of the studied dime. These findings document the importance of intentional study on memory for details of a common object and suggest that with intentional study good retention can be obtained for visual details of such objects.