Are animacy effects in episodic memory independent of encoding instructions?

ABSTRACT

The adaptive view of human memory [Nairne, J. S. 2010. Adaptive memory: Evolutionary constraints on remembering. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 53 pp. 1–32). Burlington: Academic Press; Nairne, J. S., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. 2010a. Adaptive memory: Ancestral priorities and the mnemonic value of survival processing. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 1–22, 2010b; Memory functions. In The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science, (Vol 3, 4th ed. pp. 977–979). Hokoben, NJ: John Wiley & Sons] assumes that animates (e.g., baby, rabbit presented as words or pictures) are better remembered than inanimates (e.g., bottle, mountain) because animates are more important for fitness than inanimates. In four studies, we investigated whether the animacy effect in episodic memory (i.e., the better remembering of animates over inanimates) is independent of encoding instructions. Using both a factorial (Studies 1 and 3) and a multiple regression approach (Study 2), three studies tested whether certain contexts drive people to attend to inanimate more than to animate things (or the reverse), and therefore lead to differential animacy effects. The findings showed that animacy effects on recall performance were observed in the grassland-survival scenario used by Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007. Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 33, 263–273) (Studies 1–3), when words were rated for their pleasantness (Study 2), and in explicit learning (Study 3). In the non-survival scenario of moving to a foreign land (Studies 1–2), animacy effects on recall rates were not reliable in Study 1, but were significant in Study 2, whereas these effects were reliable in the non-survival scenario of planning a trip as a tour guide (Study 3). A final (control) study (Study 4) was conducted to test specifically whether animacy effects are related to the more organised nature of animates than inanimates. Overall, the findings suggest that animacy effects are robust since they do not vary across different sets of encoding instructions (e.g., encoding for survival, preparing a trip and pleasantness).

KEYWORDS:

• Episodic memory
• animacy
• evolutionary psychology

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Mark Howe, Daniel Burns and two anonymous reviewers for their very constructive comments on previous versions of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to Gelman and Spelke (1981), the fundamental features that distinguish animates from inanimates are the following: (1) animates can move, whereas inanimates move only when the action is initiated by something or someone; (2) animates grow and reproduce; (3) animates are able to know, perceive, emote, learn and think; and (4) animates are made of biological structures that maintain life and allow reproduction.

2. It is important to note that the tests of the simple effects of the animacy factor realized at the means of the covariates were significant in all scenarios.

3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for having suggested this line of reasoning to us.

4. This was suggested to us by an anonymous reviewer. It should be noted that, strictly speaking, animate items were not isolated. Furthermore, in Study 2, the learning was incidental and certain studies suggest that von Restorff effects are not obtained under conditions of incidental learning (e.g., Postman & Phillips, 1954; Saltzman & Carterette, 1959). Interestingly, and related to this issue, a recent study (Popp & Serra, in press) has shown that presenting animates (animals) and inanimates (objects) as themed-lists (all animates or all inanimates) or mixed-lists (both animates and inanimates within the lists) does not change the size of animacy effects on recall rates.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Institut universitaire de France to the last, senior author.