Understanding and remembering action pictures: processing differences between nouns and verbs

It is well known that when pictures of objects and scenes are presented at rates comparable or higher than the average fixation frequency of the eye, many are typically understood but not remembered. Experiments investigating the rapid processing of action pictures suggest that there are differences between nouns and verbs that affect performance on recall and recognition tasks. The data supports the evidence from neuropsychological and psycholinguistic studies indicating that nouns and verbs are processed by different cognitive processing systems representing words for objects and actions. Our experiments examined effects of repetition on recall of action pictures and we contrast the results with those found with other classes of stimuli, pictured objects and words. We consider the role of variables such as verb attribute, verb type and imageability in an attempt to understand processes underlying initial comprehension and encoding of actions in immediate memory.