Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing

ABSTRACT

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys – top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

KEYWORDS:

• spatial memory
• semantic memory
• category membership
• spatial organization

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge and thank Ang Gai, Batul Karimjee, and Brinda Patel for their assistance in stimuli preparation, and Hao Zhang for his assistance with the distributions of random guesses.

Open practices statement

The data and R scripts for these experiments have been made available on a third-party archive (https://osf.io/68d2g/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A real-life example would be placement of cookware and cutlery in the kitchen, and clothing items in bedroom closets; these rooms are semantic partitions because they tend to contain items from the same semantic or functional category. While these semantic partitions are certainly also visible in space, throughout this article we reserve the term visual partitioning for those partitions delineated by visible lines (as in Solman & Kingstone, 2017a).

2 This model was singular even with the simplest random effects structure (intercepts for participants), which is equivalent to running a simple linear regression.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Discovery Grant (#04091) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), an Early Researcher Award from the Province of Ontario (#ER14-10-258), funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund (#37872) and from the Canada Research Chairs (#950-232147) program to E.F.R, and Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships from the NSERC to X.L. and M.J.H.Z.