Animacy & Memory
Below are some demonstrations of the various phenomena and manipulations discussed in the following paper:
- . Minds in motion in memory: Enhanced spatial memory driven by the perceived animacy of simple shapes. Cognition, 163, 87-92. PDF
Here we asked whether simple visual animacy cues can improve the encoding of spatial information into visual working memory. Subjects played a "matching game" in which they clicked on virtual panels to uncover animate and inanimate displays. Subjects could turn over only two panels at a time, and thus had to remember what they had seen (and where) in order to find and eliminate all of the matching panel pairs. In four experiments, the locations of displays featuring animate-looking shapes were remembered better than the locations of any of the control displays. These results may reflect a novel form of adaptive memory.
Demonstrations
Experiment 1 — Darts
Our initial experiment featured an eight-panel matching game. Panels always contained a disc and five darts, all of which moved randomly. Darts in a given panel stayed oriented toward the disc (0° - the Wolfpack display), or 45°, 90° or 135° to its right. Subjects located and eliminated Wolfpack panel pairs more efficiently, as evidenced by fewer redundent clicks (see paper for details). In other words, even though subjects had no partcicular incentive to prioritize panels featuring animate-looking shapes,
Click/tap the bars to view a sample trial featuring all four conditionsExperiment 2 - 180° Control
Could the Wolfpack's memory advantage be due to the convergence of the shapes' symmetry axes, rather than to any sort of perceived animacy? To rule this out, we developed a ten-panel matching game which included an extra pair of panels in which the darts remained oriented 180° (i.e. directly away from) the disc - thus equating 'symmetry axis convergence' while eliminating the perception of animacy. Subjects matched such pairs efficiently, but not as well as Wolfpack pairs!
Click/tap the bars to view a sample trial featuring all five conditionsExperiment 3 - Eyes
Is the Wolfpack's memory advantage specific to 'darts' (whose fronts are defined by conspicuous points)? To find out, we next replicated this effect using a very different kind of oriented stimulus - discs with 'eyes dots' on one side.
Click/tap the bars to view a sample trial featuring all five conditionsExperiment 4 - A 'Lone Wolf'
How many wolves are required for such 'Wolfpack' effects? In our final experiment, we replicated the effect with single 'lone wolf' (again using a disc with 'eyes').
Click/tap the bars to view a sample trial featuring all five conditions