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Environment and expertise shape spatiotemporal variation in conceptual knowledge

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Erik A. Wing¹, Jennifer D. Ryan¹, Asaf Gilboa¹; ¹Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest

Conceptual knowledge is often regarded as stable, yet research shows that it is continuously altered by contextual factors. Even within domains of broadly shared knowledge, the accessibility and salience of specific concepts vary with recent experience and environmental exposure. This creates a unique conceptual landscape that affects many aspects of cognition but is difficult to quantify at the level of an individual. To address this challenge, we used ecological data on bird species distributions to map spatiotemporal variation in conceptual knowledge across participants differing in domain expertise and geographical location. In a picture-word interference task (bird names overlaid on photos), reaction times varied with trial congruency (name-photo match vs. mismatch) and were further influenced by participant expertise and the regional abundance of each individual bird species. These results demonstrate that even within a single domain, large datasets can reveal the fine-grained structure of conceptual knowledge as it is dynamically shaped by exposure to items in one’s local environment.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Semantic