ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between stores and representations needed to account for visual remembering and those needed to sustain visual imagery and visual perception. It also considers how visual memories may be used and modified in everyday life, by considering the task faced by the witness to crime. The short-term visual store apparently requires active attention for its maintenance, and seems to play an important role in active visualisation and imagery. It is tempting to attribute all manifestations of visual memory in the short term to a common store—most plausibly. The “imagery” position is based on more than the introspective quality of imagery. Recent years have seen a number of demonstrations of imagery phenomena which seem to demand an explanation in terms of analogue representations. The chapter provides a brief overview of the varieties of visual memory and the ways in which these have been investigated by psychologists.
