Picture rehearsal: an effect of selectively attending to pictures no longer in view.

Five experiments demonstrate rehearsal of pictures. The pictures were displayed in pairs, with a "rehearsal interval" between successive pairs. At the beginning of each interval, subjects were cued to rehearse just one member of the preceding pair. Although the subjects were expecting a recognition test for just the cued pictures, they were tested on both the cued and the uncued pictures. The first four experiments all used a different type of picture (faces, scenes, random shapes, and simple line drawings), and in each case recognition was at a higher level for the cued pictures than for the uncued pictures. The fifth experiment examined the degree to which the benefit of the rehearsal interval was limited to the cued pictures and the results suggested that uncued pictures did not benefit at all from the rehearsal interval. It is argued that these findings of control exerted by the subject over the beneficial effects of a postpresentation interval provide an adequate demonstration that pictures can be effectively rehearsed.