An Apple Logo a Day Means Your Memory’s Okay, But Not Perfect

Immediately close your eyes and draw the Apple logo from memory. How confident are you that your drawing is accurate? Keep reading to see how well you did!

Companies change logos frequently. Google, Uber, and Instagram all rebranded in the past year or so. But how well do we actually know what these logos look like? Consider this: which way is Lincoln facing on the penny? Don’t dig into your pocket. Think about it for a second.

In a now classic study, people could not accurately identify the details of pennies. Features were confused, misplaced, or left out altogether. We’ve seen pennies many times throughout our lives, yet we are remarkably poor at remembering their design.

The penny result may seem surprising. But when we are not specifically asked to learn something – and even when we are – our memory doesn’t always come through. Our memories are not perfect. They are a combination of the actual object or event that we experienced and our own expectations and knowledge.  “But okay,” you’re thinking, “I rarely use pennies. Surely I would remember something more meaningful.”

Since the penny study, researchers have continued to explore the connection between our exposure to objects and our memory for them. In one recent study researchers looked at the Apple logo, a symbol that is everywhere; it’s on TV, on billboards, and in the hands of the person sitting next to you. Logos are also made to be recognizable, so we must know what it looks like, right?

Once again, the answer is “Not really.” Participants were, justifiably, very confident in their ability to draw the logo from memory, but only one (out of 85!) did so perfectly. The drawings tended to include parts of apples that are not in the logo, such as stems, consistent with the idea that our memory is based on our expectations (in this case, expectations of what an apple should look like). Participants even struggled to pick out the logo from eight different variations: less than half chose the correct one.

Even frequent physical interaction with objects does not guarantee success: We can have poor memory for a well-traveled elevator, and self-identified Apple users were just as overconfident in their memory for the logo as were non-users.

Here’s what is happening. Passively encountering or interacting with something does not ensure we’ll remember it. We have little trouble remembering the gist of an event or object, but picking out particular features or locations is difficult.

Cognitive psychologist Alan Castel and colleagues differentiate between “seeing” and “noticing.” Being exposed to information frequently (or “seeing” it) does not guarantee we will notice and remember it. Actually, all that exposure may encourage us to stop paying attention to the details, particularly when they do not hold any real benefit, which is the case for specifics of a penny or the Apple logo. We know it’s a penny because of its size and color, not because of the direction Lincoln faces (it’s to the right).

But these memory lapses are not necessarily a bad thing. Not keeping track of every detail leaves us room to process other important things in the world around us. We can also rely on our expectations for where objects will be, such as that a fire extinguisher will be in an easily accessible place, or that the random piece of trivia knowledge can be found on Google.

Here’s a good place to start if you want to remember something: think about it. Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham says that memory is the residue of thought. So when you want to remember the layout of that nickel in your pocket, spend some time mulling it over.

Peer edited by Amy Rydeen

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