Dr Castel and co-authors found that almost none of their subjects – University of California students – could draw the logo correctly from memory.

Among the participants were 52 Apple users, 10 PC users and 23 students who used both Apple and PC products.

“People had trouble picking out the correct logo even when it was right in front of them,” said Dr Castel, the senior author on the paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Out of 85 participants, only one correctly reproduced the Apple logo when asked to draw it on a blank sheet of paper.

Fewer than half the participants correctly identified the actual logo when they were shown it among a number of similar logos with slightly altered features.

According to the team, an explanation may be that our brains have learned it is not important to remember specific details.

“An efficient memory system does not need to store the details of a corporate logo, except perhaps to distinguish counterfeit products,” they said.

Several previous studies have shown that most people have a poor memory for other items they encounter daily or almost daily, including computer keyboards, pennies and road signs.

In the new study, participants were asked how well they would be able to draw the Apple logo before being asked to draw it.

“There was a striking discrepancy between participants’ confidence prior to drawing the logo and how well they performed on the task,” Dr Castel said.

“People’s memory, even for extremely common objects, is much poorer than they believe it to be.”

“Only one participant out of 85 correctly recalled the Apple logo, and fewer than half of all participants correctly identified the logo. Importantly, participants indicated higher levels of confidence for both recall and recognition, and this overconfidence was reduced if participants made the judgements after, rather than before, drawing the logo. The general findings did not differ between Apple and PC users,” the scientists wrote in the paper.