The classic paper on this is Standing’s 1973 “Learning 10,000 pictures.” The title really says it all: subjects shown up to 10,000 pictures (once, for a five s

The classic paper on this is Standing’s 1973 “Learning 10,000 pictures.” The title really says it all: subjects shown up to 10,000 pictures (once, for a five seconds apiece) remembered a substantial fraction of them two days later. This is somewhat specific to images (and even moreso for “vivid” ones); people did worse with dictionary words. However, one important detail is that subjects were told to pay careful attention to the stimuli; they were repeatedly reminded that a memory test was coming up. PDF: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/psych/rust-lab/publications/standing_73.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/psych/rust-lab/publications/standi... Journal Page: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14640747308400340 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1464074730840034...