Visual Memory for Natural Scenes

Humans have been exposed to a continuous stream of scenes since the first day of life. Through constant processing and encoding of scenes, the human brain develops scene knowledge that aids current scene understanding and guides future scene memory and decision-making. In this chapter, we will discuss how humans’ scene memories and understandings are shaped by (1) scene-level properties that are intrinsic to a scene or that arise through comparisons, (2) observer-level properties, such as prior knowledge, cognitive states, and ages, and (3) new knowledge generated through the interactions between scene- and observer level information.