Bahrick, H. P. & Gharrity, K. (1976). Interaction among pictorial components in the recall of picture captions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2(2), 103-111.

Single-word captions were presented with each of 30 composite pictures consisting of background and human figure components. The purpose was to infer interactions among the encoding processes which link the picture components to the captions. This was done by testing the components of the pictures as retrieval cues for the captions. Captions were selected so that they became equally strongly associated with the two components or so that the association to one of the components was stronger than the other. Both figure and background components were effective retrieval cues for captions, but the entire picture was less effective as a retrieval cue than would be expected on the basis of independent contributions of the components. This was dramatically true for captions which were more strongly associated with either the figure or the background component. The more weakly encoded component is an effective retrieval cue only in those instances in which the stronger component is also effective. The data are accounted for by a mediation interpretation.