The Influence of Outstanding Object Memories on Gist Representations in Long-Term Memory

Recent research of memory subsystems proposes that they are organized as a hierarchy of different representations, with feature objects in the bottom, object representations in the middle, and gist representations at the top. It has been shown that memory uses gist representations as a basis for bias of object and feature representations. However, it is not transparent how gist representations are computed and whether they are influenced by object representations in a non-linear way - specifically, biased towards outstanding objects. The present thesis describes an experiment that utilises a continuous color report paradigm to test that hypothesis. The results of the experiment show that outstanding objects are not included in the process of gist computation. Furthermore, the representations of outstanding objects are contrasted out compared to ordinary objects. The present thesis proposes an explanation of the described evidence through an adaptive mechanism in visual long-term memory.