What affects your visual memory?

Our visual short term memory allows us to retain the visual information we constantly perceive from our surroundings, and then makes it possible to understand a series of ‘events’ as a whole. For example, reading a book requires us to perceive and retain a series of words that we can consolidate into our memory to understand it in its entirety. Visual memory also plays a big role in driving which requires constant attention and retention of your environment (i.e., traffic signs, other cars, etc.). Critical to our everyday functioning, damage to one's visual short term memory may reduce the time and amount of information that you are able to retain. Deficits in visual memory can occur in people with Alzheimer's, dyslexia, as well as other disorders and can widely be affected by the use of drugs.

Resources:

• Visual short-term memory http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Visual_short_term_memory
• Schurgin, M.W. Visual memory, the long and the short of it: A review of visual working memory and long-term memory. Atten Percept Psychophys 80, 1035–1056 (2018). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-018-1522-y

Parameters
The following features can be tweaked (default values in parentheses):

• Task instructions
• Number of pictures to memorize (10)
• Number of trials in the recall condition (20)
• Duration of picture presentation (5000 ms)
• Memorization condition (writing/non-writing;whether or not participants have to write the name of a picture)
• Recall condition (recognition/recall; whether or not participants have to recall or recognize pictures)
• Instruction headers and text (all conditions)

What data is collected? How is it scored?
The following variables are recorded:

• memorizeCondition
• recallCondition
• hits
• misses
• false_alarms
• correct_rejections
• hit_percent
• miss_percent
• false_alarm_percent
• correct_rejection_percent

memorizeCondition indicates writing/non-writing condition, recallCondition indicates recall/recognition condition.
Correct

• Hits: Correctly reporting the presence of the signal
• Correct Rejections: Correctly reporting the absence of the signal

Incorrect

• False Alarms: Incorrectly reporting presence of the signal when it did not occur
• Misses: Failing to report the presence of the signal when it occurred

Hits Percent = Number of hits / Number of signal trials
Misses Percent = Number of Misses / Number of signal trials
Correct Rejections Percent = Number of Correct Rejections / Number of noise trials
False Alarms Percent = Number of False Alarms / Number of noise trials