Animacy and threat in recognition memory

Abstract

Animate items are better remembered than inanimate items, suggesting that human memory has evolved to prioritize information related to survival. The proximate mechanisms for the animacy effect are not yet known, but one possibility is that animate items are more likely to capture attention, which then leads to better memory for those items. The first experiment independently manipulated the animacy and perceived threat of studied items and found that both target recognition and false-alarm recognition were higher for animate items compared to inanimate items and for threatening items compared to non-threatening items. The effects were eliminated when d' scores were calculated. The second experiment used a response signal delay (RSD) manipulation where participants were forced to respond after a short (500 ms) or long (2,000 ms) time delay during the recognition test. Similar to the first experiment, the effects of animacy and threat for target recognition and false-alarm recognition persisted and did not interact with the RSD manipulation. Taken together, the results of the studies suggest that the animacy and threat effects in memory are robust and that attention capture might be at least partly responsible for the animacy effect.

Animacy enhances recollection but not familiarity: Convergent evidence from the remember-know-guess paradigm and the process-dissociation procedure

“…While the animacy effect has robustly been found in free-recall paradigms (Bonin et al, 2014 ; Leding, 2019 ; Meinhardt et al, 2018 , 2020 ; Popp & Serra, 2016 , 2018 ), it is less clear whether there is a robust animacy advantage in recognition paradigms. Some researchers have reported enhanced recognition of animate in comparison to inanimate words (Bonin et al, 2014 ), but inconsistent results have also been obtained (Leding, 2020 ; Mieth et al, 2019 ). For instance, Leding ( 2020 ) reported that animacy induced a guessing bias towards believing the words had occurred before, but the animacy status did not affect memory accuracy.…”

“…Some researchers have reported enhanced recognition of animate in comparison to inanimate words (Bonin et al, 2014 ), but inconsistent results have also been obtained (Leding, 2020 ; Mieth et al, 2019 ). For instance, Leding ( 2020 ) reported that animacy induced a guessing bias towards believing the words had occurred before, but the animacy status did not affect memory accuracy. A potential reason for these inconsistent findings is that animacy might not equally enhance all processes underlying observable recognition memory performance.…”

“…These findings were replicated in two additional studies (Bugaiska et al, 2016 ; Rawlinson & Kelley, 2021 ) in which animacy selectively enhanced “remember” judgments without affecting “know” judgments, while false-alarm rates were unaffected. However, Leding ( 2020 ) found an increase in false-alarm rates for animate words. Beyond that, the animacy effect on recognition was eliminated once response bias was taken into account, suggesting that animacy primarily affected guessing but not recognition accuracy.…”

Animate and Inanimate Words Demonstrate Equivalent Retrieval Dynamics Despite the Occurrence of the Animacy Advantage

“…Most often, researchers examine this effect in the context of the free recall of word lists and have consistently found a recall advantage for animate (e.g., tiger; engineer) over inanimate (e.g., couch; violin) words (e.g., Nairne et al, 2013;Bonin et al, 2014Bonin et al, , 2015Li et al, 2016;Serra, 2016, 2018;Gelin et al, 2017Gelin et al, , 2019VanArsdall et al, 2017;Leding, 2018Leding, , 2019Meinhardt et al, 2018). The advantage can also occur for recognition (Leding, 2020), nonwords given animate properties (VanArsdall et al, 2013), and word pairs (e.g., VanArsdall et al, 2015;DeYoung and Serra, 2021). We do not know the mechanism(s) that underlies the animacy advantage, but researchers have discredited some potential candidates.…”

“…The animacy advantage does not seem to occur because animate words are easier to categorize ( Gelin et al, 2017 ; VanArsdall et al, 2017 ), more mentally arousing ( Popp and Serra, 2018 ), more emotionally arousing ( Meinhardt et al, 2018 ), or more threatening ( Leding, 2019 , 2020 ) or invoke greater encoding effort ( Bonin et al, 2015 ; Leding, 2018 ) than inanimate words. At present, there is conflicting evidence whether animate concepts involve greater visual imagery (i.e., Bonin et al, 2015 ; Gelin et al, 2019 ) and conflicting evidence that animate items attract more attention during encoding (i.e., Bonin et al, 2015 ; Hagen et al, 2018 ; Bugaiska et al, 2019 ; Johnson, 2019 ; Leding, 2019 , 2020 ). Growing evidence suggests the effect might stem from the greater richness of encoding for animate items (e.g., Mieth et al, 2019 ; Mah et al, 2020 ; Meinhardt et al, 2020 ).…”