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Working memory plays an important role in human activities across academic, professional, and social settings. Working memory is defined as the memory extensively involved in goal-directed behaviors in which information must be retained and manipulated to ensure successful task execution. The aim of this research is to understand the effect of image captioning with image description on an individual’s working memory. A study was conducted with eight neutral images comprising situations relatable to daily life such that each image could have a positive or negative description associated with the outcome of the situation in the image. The study consisted of three rounds where the first and second round involved two parts and the third round consisted of one part. The image was captioned a total of five times across the entire study. The findings highlighted that only 25% of participants were able to recall the captions which they captioned for an image after a span of 9–15 days; when comparing the recall rate of the captions, 50% of participants were able to recall the image caption from the previous round in the present round; and out of the positive and negative description associated with the image, 65% of participants recalled the former description rather than the latter.
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MEMCONS: How Contemporaneous Note‐Taking Shapes Memory for Conversation
Abstract Written memoranda of conversations, or memcons, provide a near‐contemporaneous record of what was said in conversation, and offer important insights into the activities of high‐profile individuals. We assess the impact of writing a memcon on memory for conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in conversation and were asked to recall the contents of that conversation 1 week later. One participant in each pair memorialized the content of the interaction in a memcon shortly after the conversation. Participants who generated memcons recalled more details of the conversations than participants who did not, but the content of recall was equally and largely accurate for both participants. Remarkably, only 4.7% of the details of the conversation were recalled by both of the partners after a week delay. Contemporaneous note‐taking appears to enhance memory for conversation by increasing the amount of information remembered but not the accuracy of that information. These findings have implications for evaluating the testimony of participants on conversations with major political or legal ramifications.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1921492
- PAR ID:
- 10420648
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cognitive Science
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0364-0213
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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