The Effect Of Animacy On The Search Process In Free Recall

Typically,research has shown that animate words are remembered better than inanimate words(Nairne,VanArsdall,& Cogdill,2017;Popp & Serra,2018);however,most studies have reported only the mean proportion of correctly recalled words.The present study looked at various dependent measures used by search models to determine whether animacy can influence the search process as well.(1)For memory performance,both Experiments 1 and 2 show that the memory performance of animate words are better than those of the inanimate words;And the experiment 2 shows that the memory performances of all categories under the animate category are better than those under inanimate category.(2)For the search process of memory,Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 both find that the initial sampling probability of the animate words is greater than those of the inanimate words,that is,the animate words are recalled prior to the inanimate words in search process;In the subsequent sampling of search process,comparing with the inanimate category,the subjects in Experiment 1 used the animacy category to help the subsequent sampling,and were more adept at using the animate category for subsequent sampling.However,when the categories of animacy is well organized of sub-categories(professional,animal,etc.)in Experiment 2,the subjects are more likely to use the clues of sub-categories to subsequent sample and are better at using animate sub-categories clues(professional,animal,etc.)to sample subsequent words than inanimate sub-categories clues.Overall,the results suggest that animacy can influence the probability of sampling an item during the search process—specifically base on relative strength and interitem associations.