logo you encounter every day? Psychologists who invited dozens of college students to draw the
Apple logo from memory found hardly any could recall it accurately.
Six of the false Apple logos in the array the students were asked to pick from.
Image credit: A Blake, M Nazarian, A Castel/UCLA Psychology
Also, when invited to pick out the Apple logo from an array of similar looking ones, more than
half the students picked the wrong one.
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), report the results of
their recall and recognition study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Senior author Alan Castel, associate professor of psychology at UCLA, says:
"People had trouble picking out the correct logo even when it was right in front of
them."
In earlier research, Prof. Castel had shown that office
workers were not able to recall the location of a bright red fire extinguisher they had walked
past hundreds of times.
Other researchers have also shown that most of us are not good at recalling details of objects
we encounter every day, such as road signs, pennies and computer keyboards. Even accomplished
typists can struggle to recall all the keys of a standard keyboard.
'Just because we have seen something many times does not mean we remember it'
For this new study, Prof. Castel and his UCLA colleagues invited 85 undergraduates of the
university to draw the ubiquitous Apple logo correctly from memory on a blank sheet of paper.
To the researchers' surprise, only one participant correctly reproduced the Apple logo from
memory.
And fewer than half of the participants correctly identified the logo when asked to pick it out
from an array of Apple logos that included the correct amongst some with slightly altered
features.
The participants included 52 who used Apple computers, 10 who used non-Apple computers, and 23
who used both Apple and non-Apple devices. However, the findings did not reflect any differences
among Apple and non-Apple users.
The Apple logo is one of the most recognizable and familiar brands in the world. As a logo it
is designed to be simple and memorable - so how is it that the participants' recall and
recognition was so poor?
From the earlier study, Prof. Castel had established that, "Just because we've seen something
many times doesn't mean we remember it or even notice it."
We may overestimate our power of recall
One explanation for the findings is that our brains have learned it is not important to
remember the exact details of an object. An efficient memory does not burden itself with the
details of a corporate logo, except perhaps when it is concerned with distinguishing counterfeit
products.
The researchers suggest that when there is an intention to encode the details of the logo, then
people are more likely to memorize and reproduce it accurately. "However, in naturalistic settings
there is probably no intent to encode the details of the Apple logo."
They also conclude that their findings likely extend to specific memory for other logos. For
example, "failure to remember the colors of the Google letters," they note.
The team also found that we probably overestimate the accuracy of our recall. They asked the
participants how confident they were that they could draw the Apple logo accurately before they
drew it. Prof. Castel notes:
"There was a striking discrepancy between participants' confidence prior to drawing
the logo and how well they performed on the task. People's memory, even for extremely common
objects, is much poorer than they believe it to be."
How well do you know the Apple logo? The UCLA team has produced this web page for you to test
yourself.
Meanwhile, Medical News Today recently learned of a study that found power naps can help memory. People who follow a concentrated
period of learning with a short relaxing sleep have better memory recall, say researchers from
Saarland University in Germany.
Written by Catharine Paddock PhD