| Popis: |
Previous research suggests that free recall tends to be better for names or pictures of animals than for names or pictures of inanimate objects. Theoretical accounts suggest that this may be due to the heightened evolutionary salience and survival relevance of animate stimuli. VanArsdell, Nairne, Pandeirada, and Cogdill (2014) reported two studies in which participants studied Swahili–English translations, and were tested on ability to recall the English target word when cued with the Swahili word for animate and inanimate nouns. Performance was better for animate than inanimate words (a standard animacy effect). Popp and Serra (2016) examined the effects of whether a stimulus is animate or inanimate on free recall and on paired-associate cued recall learning (hereinafter referred to here as cued recall). In their first experiment, they (like prior researchers) found that free recall was superior for animate relative to inanimate words (animacy effect). The new finding was that cued recall was superior for inanimate pairs relative to animate pairs (reversed animacy effect). Popp and Serra (2016) reported two additional experiments that yielded evidence of a reversed animacy effect on cued recall. The only other published report of a reversed animacy effect for cued recall that we found was Kazanas, Altarriba, and O’Brien (2020), who obtained better performance for animate than inanimate pairs on three different cued-recall-like tasks. Theoretical explanations for the reverse animacy effect vary, and there is no consensus as to the primary mechanism. The purposes of the current study are to 1) attempt to replicate the standard animacy effect for free recall, (2) attempt to replicate the reverse animacy effect for cued recall, and 3) provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the reverse animacy effect, should it exist. We plan to do the latter using qualitative questions about participant strategy use and experiences during the memory tests. |
