SCHMELZKOPF, KAREN FRANCES.

Man lacks the cognitive capabilities by which to process
all the complex and detailed information of the environment,
yet is able to formulate a comprehensive notion of the
environment. The present study hypothesized that a cognitive
mechanism exists by which salient information is abstracted
and stored in memory. Subjects were required to
learn to discriminate among four sets of photographs of an
urban street scene, taken from four different locations
within an area of 150 square meters. An identification
test was administered either immediately or one week after
acquisition, using photographs from the acquisition set and
novel photographs taken from the same locations but at
different camera orientations. The results indicated that
subjects abstract a continuous schematic representation from
discrete photographic samples of the total scene. These
results suggest that man in a real-world situation remembers
a general, schematic concept of the environment, rather than
detailed, specific information.