http://www.pnas.org/content/93/2/922.full.

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How Displaying Posters In Public Environments Speak On The Awareness

Of College Students In Their Surroundings
Adrianna M. Boston, Gabrielle J. Dunlap, and Alexus K. Phoenix
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Kenese, Gabby,and Adrianna

Introduction
Prospective person memory refers to situation where individuals are asked to be on the lookout
for wanted or missing individuals and then later encounter those individuals (Lampinen, Peters,
Gier, 2012, p.702. This form of memory is remembering to remember, or remembering to
perform an intended action. Going to your appointment to the doctors would be an example of
this. In a study using a prospective person, they find out that they are less likely able to use
outdated or age progressed pictures to help in the search for the missing children. When putting
the missing children at a table in front of the classroom, many people walked past the table. Very
few noticed the children and contacted someone (Lampinen, Peters, Gier, 2012). When they used
a poster to alert others about the missing children, more people were likely to glance and see
what it was they were looking for. However missing or wanted individuals may be identified by
people who have previously encountered them and later see an alert put out is called
retrospective person memory (Lampinen, Peters, Gier, 2012). Retrospective memory is when
content is remembered from the past. Both memories can help in finding wanted or missing
individuals. A dissociation between human neural systems that participate in the encoding and
later recognition of new memories for faces was demonstrated by measuring memory taskrelated changes in regional and cerebral blood flow with positron emission tomography. There
was almost no overlap between the brains structures associated with these memory functions. A

region in the right hippocampus and adjacent cortex was activated during memory encoding but
not during recognition (Haxby, Ungerleider, Horwitz, Maisog, Rapoport, Grady, 1996, p.922).

Methods
Participants
Subjects in this study were UNC-Charlotte students, both male and female, of all races.
Those who participated were completely random and dependent upon the time, day and location
of the experiment. Participants were drawn from two separate locations, the Student Union and
Prospector. Data was taken beginning at 4 oclock in the Student Union, and 5 oclock in
Prospector on two consecutive days. From each of the two locations, 50 subjects were tested at
each, totaling 100.
Measures
At each location, data was based on a 50-point scale. In total 100 participants were tested,
then data was concluded based on a 100-point scale.
Procedures
Participants at each location were of random selection. Whoever walked by was asked to look at
the poster, and counted as a test subject. First, a poster was shown with the new students face to
everyone who walked by. Second, tallies were taken to keep track of how many subjects actually
participated. Third, tallies were taken of who acknowledged the new student just a few feet away from
where they were initially shown the poster. Fourth, candy was given to everyone who successfully
completed the experiment. Observations were taken throughout the experiment.

Results
The Student Union Results, first pie graph, contains the percentages of the college
students that did and did not say hey. 26% of the participants spoke to the new student and
received candy for doing so. Many students that didnt say hey to the new student said hey
to the person holding the poster. Some even walked past the new student numerous times without
ever speaking or realizing her. One of the male students came up to us and said I would feel bad
if it was me on the poster, and I was missing or something because nobody would look to find
me. In addition to that, a boy and girl came up and said the experiment wouldnt work because
people think all black people look the same. Some of the participants had to take a second look at
the poster before they could identify the person. Another male student had a delayed reaction
after sitting directly across from her and said hey five minutes later.
The Prospector Results, the second pie graph, displays the data collected on November
6th at 5:00 p.m. of college students of UNC-Charlotte that did and did not say hey after they
were given directions to do so. The results show that only 16% said hey while the other 84% did
not say hey. One boy stood right in front of her and said, I dont see her face. Another guy
looked all around Prospector and still didnt notice her sitting a few feet behind us. Multiple
people sat right beside her without also noticing. One last thing that we observed was that one
guy did stare right in her face for a while but then finally realized it was her and said hello. These
results not displayed on the graph are credible because of what was observed.
References

Haxby, J. V., Ungerleider, L. G., Horwitz, B., Maisog, J. M., Rapoport, S. I., & Grady, C. L.

(January 01, 1996). Face encoding and recognition in the human brain. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 93, 2, 922-7.
Lampinen, J. M., Arnal, J., & Hicks, J. L. (January 01, 2009). The effectiveness of supermarket
posters in helping to find missing children. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24, 3, 40623.
Lampinen, J. M., Peters, C. S., & Gier, V. S. (September 01, 2012). Power in numbers: The
effect of target set size on prospective person memory in an analog missing child
scenario. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26, 5, 702-708.