| Popis: |
Researchers have found that performance on free recall and recognition tends to be better for animal stimuli (e.g., words and pictures) than object stimuli (Leding, 2020; VanArsdall et al., 2013). This so-called “animacy effect” has been explained in terms of evolutionary psychology—we may be better at remembering things that have more survival relevance (e.g., animals) (Nairne et al., 2007). However, recent research has found that animacy may not always benefit memory-test performance —many studies have reported better performance on animals than objects on free recall, but Popp and Serra (2016) recently reported better performance on objects versus animals on paired-associate cued recall, We recently replicated this effect in a preregistered direct replication (Mah et al., in preparation). This “reverse animacy effect” has implications for theories of memory, but is not well understood. Therefore, the objective of this research is to investigate the causes of the reverse animacy effect in paired-associate cued recall. We speculate that the animacy and reverse animacy effects may be the result of the animal words being more interrelated than the object words. Greater within-category similarity could benefit free recall (via greater activation of more animal words during recall) but hurt cued recall (via more interference as a result of more non-target animal words being activated). Popp and Serra (2016) discussed this possibility, and there is some theoretical precedence for similarity-based interference effects in models such as the Search of Associative Memory (Raaijmakers & Shiffron, 1980; 1981)., This study will test this explanation by manipulating within-category similarity of animal and object words across free and cued recall. We will use a mixed design, with two factors (Memory type: Free, Cued; Animacy: Animals, Objects) manipulated within-subjects and a third factor (Within-category similarity: Animals-more-similar, Equal) manipulated between-subjects. Each subject will complete two FR study/list blocks and two CR study/list blocks; half of the subjects will do CR before FR, whereas the remainder will do FR before CR. We previously drafted a plan for a study testing this same hypothesis (see https://docs.google.com/document/d/18oKBq7jxl-4Pz7zZ6iQBIVeflmaU83QU7oXk0UzGi1s/edit) and tested 153 subjects but then discovered that a programming error produced varying numbers of animals versus objects in the first versus second lists of each type of test. Those data did not support the hypothesis that greater semantic relatedness for animals than objects gave rise to the reverse animacy effect, but arguably the programming error might have vitiated an effect of semantic relatedness. The current study corrects the programming error. |
