Adaptive memory: longevity and learning intentionality of the animacy effect

ABSTRACT

The animacy effect—the finding that animates are better remembered than inanimates—is proving to be a robust empirical phenomenon. Considering the adaptiveness of the animate advantage, one might expect it to remain after long retention intervals and also to be present irrespectively of an intention to learn. The present study explores these two aspects. Different groups of participants learned (intentional learning) or rated the pleasantness (incidental learning) of animate and inanimate words; memory was tested immediately or after a 48 h delay. A significant animacy effect was obtained after both retention intervals and in both learning conditions. Two significant interactions revealed a larger animacy effect, as well as a larger effect of the retention interval, when learning was incidental. Our findings reinforce the robustness of the animacy effect and provide some insight into possible proximate mechanisms of the effect.

KEYWORDS:

• Animacy
• adaptive memory
• intentional learning
• incidental learning
• retention interval

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The different group sizes across conditions are due to the nature of the procedure used to collect the data. Additionally, this procedure led to the exclusion of a large number of participants in the delayed condition and even more so in the incidental learning condition. Still, the number of participants per group exceeds what has been used in previous studies with similar comparisons (e.g., Gelin et al., 2017).

2 According to the study that provides norms for this dimension, Dominance “reflects the degree of control a subject feels over a specific stimulus, varying from ‘in control’ to ‘out of control’” (Soares et al., 2012, p. 257). Relatedness refers to semantic relatedness and was calculated using latent semantic analysis following Landauer et al. (1998).

3 The raw data files can be obtained by request to the authors or via our lab website (evo.psych.purdue.edu).

4 We also repeated the same 3-way ANOVA including the participants from the incidental learning conditions who suspected they were performing a memory task or reported to have memorized the words (n = 26) and the participants from the delayed conditions who were aware of the duration of the retention interval (n = 26; only 15 of these performed the recall phase and were included in this analysis). The pattern of results was similar to that reported without these participants. However, in this overall analysis, the 3-way interaction also reached significance, F(1, 257) = 4.40, MSE = .014, p = .04, η² _p = .02. Thus, even including participants who could carry a set of potential confounding variables, the main effects of animacy and of the retention interval remained significant.

Additional information

Funding

Josefa N. S. Pandeirada was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [research grants FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-029610—PTDC/MHC-PCN/5274/2012, IF/00058/2012/CP0172/CT0002, and Investigator Grant IF/00058/2012]. James S. Nairne was supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1532345). This work was part of Sara B. Félix's Master dissertation.