Where did I leave my keys? The effects of enactment on the precision of object-location memory.

Poster Session E - Monday, April 15, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Suesan MacRae¹ (smacra2@uwo.ca), Ken McRae¹, Stefan Köhler¹; ¹Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario

Research on the enactment effect suggests that performing an action during learning leads to better memory than solely listening to corresponding words. This well-established effect has yet to be examined in the context of object-location memory. We used Tompary et al.'s (2020) experimental paradigm in which participants learn the association between object images and their locations along the perimeter of a ring. At test, they are asked to place each item in its learned location. This paradigm provides a measure of the angular distance between the learned and recalled locations, affording a continuous precise measure of recall accuracy. Here, participants were assigned to one of two encoding conditions. The active condition required using a mouse to drag an object to its target location; the passive condition involved watching the object move to its target location (in a yoked design). Immediately after learning, participants in both conditions placed the objects in the locations they recalled. Preliminary results (N = 27 per condition) revealed a trend towards an enactment effect, in that participants exhibited more precise recall in the active than the passive condition. This pattern was most noticeable on trials in which the recalled position was within the correct quadrant (i.e., 90˚). We suggest that the motor component of enactment during learning benefits the fine-tuning of recall; movement may help us calibrate once we have an approximate idea of an object’s studied location. Mouse tracking data were collected and will be used to characterize this effect dynamically.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic