Long-term memory for pictures.

The concept of a scene schema was used to predict the kinds of information that will be remembered from complex pictures over relatively long periods of time. Recognition of eight types of transformations on both organized and unorganized pictures was tested either immediately following presentation or at intervals of a day, a week, or 4 months. Certain kinds of information in organized pictures remained virtually intact over a 4-month period, whereas other kinds disappeared completely. It was concluded that a scene schema contains an inventory of objects in a scene and their locations relative to each other, but it does not include descriptive information about the appearance of the objects or the overall spatial composition of the scene.