Spatial language influences memory for spatial scenes

Abstract

Does language influence recognition for spatial scenes? In Experiments 1 and 2, participants viewed ambiguous pictures, with or without spatial sentences. In a yes-no recognition task, only the spatial sentences group made more false alarms toward the center of the spatial category than in the other direction; three other comparison groups showed no such tendency. This shift toward the core of the semantic category suggests that spatial language interacted with perceptual information during encoding. In Experiment 3, we varied the materials to test the interactive encoding account against a separate encoding account in which separately stored sentences are accessed during picture recognition. The results support the interactive encoding account in which spatial language influences the encoding and memory of spatial relations. Memory & Cognition 2007, 35 (2), 283-296 M. I. Feist, feist@louisiana.edu

Priming effects with ambiguous figures

“…Attention to the physical characteristics of the stimuli during encoding eliminated the prime's influence on complex object perception. These findings are consistent with the conceptual priming literature and extend those of some recent studies (Balcetis & Dale, 2007;Feist & Gentner, 2007), which show that the interpretation of complex figures can be biased by the advanced presentation of related verbal information.…”

“…These findings may also extend the work of Feist and Gentner (2007) by showing that the priming effects are not specific to linguistic materials. Primes presented in both word and picture formats can interact with complex objects to influence the way in which the material is represented and remembered.…”

“…Our work differed from other recent priming studies (Balcetis & Dale, 2007;Feist & Gentner, 2007) in that we varied the format, the semantic content of the prime, and the attention paid to the semantic relationship between the prime and the ambiguous figure. The semantic content of the prime was varied by manipulating whether the prime was related or unrelated to one of the two organizations of the figure.…”

“…Balcetis and Dale's (2007) finding of a verbal priming effect is consistent with the research in conceptual priming and with some evidence from research in linguistics showing that language can influence visual perception. Feist and Gentner (2007) presented ambiguous pictures with and without sentences that biased the spatial relationship between objects in visual scenes. They found significant differences between the two groups in their recognition response.…”

“…We varied the format to test whether the priming effect obtained by Balcetis and Dale (2007) and Feist and Gentner (2007) was specific to the presentation of verbal material or resulted from any related information presented either as a picture or as words. The results from Matsukawa et al (2005) suggest that it is the semantic relatedness of the prime rather than the prime format that determines its effectiveness.…”