Give Now  »

Noon Edition

The Apple in the Mind's Eye 

Apple computer logo and power cable

Apple Varieties

In 2015, a team of psychologists published a study of visual memory in which they found that many people, including Apple users, couldn't correctly draw the logo. Nor could they distinguish it from versions with major details altered. Before they took part in the experiment, the subjects insisted that the Apple logo was very memorable.

The scientists wanted to learn how visual memory works in everyday life, and the findings were a big surprise. In the lab, people can perform amazing feats of visual memory, memorizing details of hundreds of images.

Core of the Matter

The scientists think that in everyday life, people stop paying attention to the details of the logo, because they don't need them any more to recognize it. They made similar findings about other familiar objects like pennies.

Turns out, people remember the logo without remember many details. For example, a third of the participants included an apple stem, which the logo doesn't have.

Scientists hypothesize that people rely on some general mental scheme of what apples look like to remember the Apple logo.

It's amazing what we can learn about vision, memory, and attention from such a simple experiment.

Read More:

"We Don't Notice Much of What We See: 85 College Students Tried to Draw the Apple Logo From Memory 84 Failed" (Science Daily)

"What is Visual Memory?" (wiseGEEK)

"Change Blindness Demo" (Go Cognitive)

"Memory Test: Test Your Visual Memory" (Zdenek Rotrekl video)

 

Support For Indiana Public Media Comes From

About A Moment of Science