An exploration of the influence of animal and object categories on recall of item location following an incidental learning task

Abstract

The current study explores the role of attention in location memory for animals and objects. Participants completed an incidental learning task where they rated animals and objects with regard to either their ease of collection to win a scavenger hunt (Experiments 1a and b) or their distance from the centre of the computer screen (Experiment 2). The images of animals and objects were pseudo-randomly positioned on the screen in both experiments. After completing the incidental learning task (and a reverse counting distractor task), participants were then given a surprise location memory recall task. In the location memory recall task, items were shown in the centre of the screen and participants used the mouse to indicate the position the item had been shown during the incidental encoding task. The results of both experiments show that location memory for objects was more accurate than for animals. While we cannot definitively identify the mechanism responsible for the difference in the location memory of objects and animals, we propose that differences in the influence of object-based attention at encoding affect location memory when tested at recall.

Keywords: Object location; attention; memory for object location; object based attention.

Figure 1.

A schematic representation of Hu et al.’s (2023) experimental paradigm.

Figure 2.

The target animals and objects used in the current study.

Figure 3.

The mean recall performance in Experiment 1a for (a) mean Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (b) consistency of Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (c) the retrieval decision time for animals and objects in both near and far locations; and (d) proportion of targets correctly recalled in the displayed quadrant. All error bars represent ±95% CI.

Figure 4.

The mean recall performance in Experiment 1b for (a) mean Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (b) consistency of Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (c) the retrieval decision times for animals and objects in both near and far locations; and (d) proportion of targets correctly recalled in the displayed quadrant. All error bars represent ±95% CI.

Figure 5.

The mean Euclidean distance error for each target item pooled across Experiments 1a and 1b. The error bars represent 95% CI.

Figure 6.

Scatterplots depicting the relationship between ease of collection rating and mean Euclidean distance error for individual targets in the pooled data from Experiments 1a and 1b for (a) animals and (b) objects. The grey bands represent 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 7.

Scatterplots depicting the relationship between encoding decision time and mean Euclidean distance error for individual targets in the pooled Experiments 1a and 1b data for (a) animals only, and (b) objects only. The grey bands represent 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 8.

The mean recall performance in Experiment 2 for (a) mean Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (b) consistency of Euclidean distance error for animals and objects in both near and far locations; (c) the mean retrieval decision times for animals and objects in both near and far locations; and (d) proportion of targets correctly recalled in the displayed quadrant. All error bars represent ±95% CI.