Our brains have a remarkable capacity for acquiring and
retaining visual images of people or photos. For example, in one study (Shepard, 1967)
presented 612 pictures of common scenes to subjects, and later asked which of two similar
pictures shown was one of the 612 seen earlier? After the presentation the subjects were
97% correct in identifying picture they had seen. Three days later, they were still 92%
correct, and three months later they were correct 58% of the time. This and many other
studies have shown that humans have a remarkable ability to recall images, although they
soon forget many of the details in the images. Considering how often we look at pennies, it
is interesting that the subjects asked to draw a penny in a study by Nickerson and Adams
(1979) omitted more than half of the features or located them in the wrong place. We
believe that integrating various kind of images into a conceptual framework using concept
mapping software like CmapTools (described below) could enhance iconic memory, and
we hope research on this will be done.