Examining the impact of animate and inanimate objects using a free recall experiment task.

Abstract

The research report examines whether humans can recall animate images better than inanimate ones. The study involved 19 psychology students who participated in a free recall experimental task to investigate differences between inanimate and animate stimuli. Animacy plays a significant role in various cognitive processes, including memory (Leding, 2020). Previous research indicates that human cognition can effectively distinguish between living and non-living entities. Based on existing literature, the hypothesis formed was that animate items would be more likely to be remembered than inanimate ones. The results revealed that animate images were better recalled compared to inanimate objects. For future research, it would be beneficial to include age demographics. Since memory tends to decline as individuals age, it would be intriguing to explore whether this could influence memory recall.

 

Examining the impact of animate and inanimate objects using a free recall experiment task.

 

Working memory is a cognitive system that temporarily stores information, allowing individuals to hold onto specific information for short periods of time (Towse et al., 2008). Animate items encompass living things, whereas inanimate items refer to objects that are not alive (Bonin et al., 2014). Animate objects can think, learn, and perceive, thanks to their biological structures that enable reproduction and sustain life (Bonin et al., 2014). Animacy influences basic memory processes which has been shown to be present from infancy (Leding, 2020) . It plays a role in language comprehension, perception and reasoning (Nairne et al., 2017).

 

The phenomenon, known as the animacy effect, suggests that animate stimuli are better retained in memory than inanimate ones (Félix et al., 2023). The animacy effect is still being studied and the mechanisms of how animacy works have not yet been found (Leding, 2020). One suggestion would be that they are more likely to capture attention, leading to better memory recall (Leding, 2020). Studies indicate that animate items are more effectively retained in memory compared to inanimate items, implying that human memory may prioritize information relevant to survival (Leding, 2020).

 

Cognitive processing through natural selection is a major assumption of evolutionary psychology (Bonin et al., 2014). Research indicates that attention is drawn more towards animate stimuli than inanimate ones, reflecting an evolutionary adaptation for survival (Bonin et al., 2014; Serra & DeYoung, 2023). Cognitive processing depends on information content (Nairne et al., 2013). The brain regions devoted to processing animate information suggests that it is a fundamental characteristic of the human cognitive system (Popp & Serra, 2016; Serra & DeYoung, 2023). Evolutionary theorists suggests that there is memory tuning for fitness relevant information which enhances the odds of survival and reproduction (Félix et al., 2023). Fitness pressures are said to quickly detect threats in the environment (Bonin et al., 2014; Serra & DeYoung, 2023).

 

A functionalist perspective on memory would say that human memory evolved to solve crucial adaptive challenges, such as detecting potential threats and ensuring successful reproduction (Bonin et al., 2014). The animacy effect shows that our cognitive systems are finely tuned to detect animate stimuli, providing empirical evidence for the functionalist view of memory (Leding, 2020). Supporting the idea that remembering animate stimuli offers significant survival advantages, reinforcing the importance of adaptability in human cognition (Bonin et al., 2014).

 

Serra and DeYoung (2023) found that when the study is self-paced, individuals did not purposely allocate greater attention processing, animacy naturally triggers richness encoding. Under some conditions participants can engage in processing inanimate items deeper, which reduces the animacy advantage. Meinhardt et al. (2020) proposed that animate items may initially attract attention more strongly than inanimate items, thereby prompting deeper processing of animate stimuli relative to inanimate ones. In studies, animacy correlated strongly with recall and indicates it has a powerful effect on remembering (Nairne et al., 2017).

 

Retrospective memory tasks have showed animate stimuli is remembered more than are inanimate stimuli non-living things (Félix et al., 2023). However, when the existing multiple cues are irrelevant to the task there is sometimes no animacy effect, such as cued recall (Félix et al., 2023). Popp and Serra (2016) discovered that animacy impaired cued recall, but this impairment was not observed in free recall, which was consistent with previous findings. Free recall is when participants must list words and recall as many as they remember (Garlitch et al., 2023). Adult The results showed that animacy enhances free recall of word lists but impairs cued recall (Popp & Serra, 2016).

 

The study required participants to complete a free recall task to examine the memory recall for inanimate and animate objects. The research aim of the study was to examine the influence of animacy on free recall. The data collected was used as an experimental memory task to empirically investigate this phenomenon. The current literature indicated the hypothesis that animate items will more than likely be remembered than inanimate items. Completing this study will enhance the understanding of published research and possibly strengthen the evidence already found.

 

Method

Participants

A convenience sample was found by an invitation which was distributed via Moodle to psychology students. Participants were over 18 years old. Twenty-one individuals participated. However, two were removed due to incomplete information in the data.

Design

The design was an experiment which was within-subjects as all participants completed the same conditions. The independent variable was the stimuli pictures; animate and inanimate. The dependent variable was the memory score. There were 12 animate target stimuli of living things and 12 inanimate stimuli of non-living things. These were filtered by familiarity of concept, mental imagery agreement and inanimate/animate classification. The objects were presented for 3 seconds (3000ms) with a fixation cross in between each one for 1 second (1000ms) and presented randomly. The object names were below the image. After that, arithmetic questions were asked to distract the researcher. These consisted of basic subtraction, addition, multiplication, division. Participants were asked to complete each exercise as quickly as possible in 2 minutes. Finally, individuals had to freely recall as many of the objects by writing the object name and object colour down. Individuals had 4 minutes to do this. There were 24 boxes available to write answers down. Once completed participants were informed of the experiment that was written in the debrief.

Measures / Stimuli / Materials

For this study participants needed access to a computer or laptop with a keyboard, a tablet or smart phone with a stable internet. The study was hosted on Gorilla.sc. which is a secure online platform for conducting quantitative experiments. No additional software was needed for this study. Stimuli images were sourced from Williams et al. (2023) from an experimental database through the Open Science Framework. Animate images consisted of animals for example a duck and a chicken. Inanimate images consisted of objects, for example a needle and a bell. All 24 images can be found at the bottom on the appendix. Once data was collected, it was then analysed using SSPS statistical software.

Procedure

Participants were asked to read a privacy notice and were given an information sheet prior to the experiment. The information sheet included further details about how personal information was being stored and how long it was retained for. It was promised that all the information stored was anonymous. Participants were also asked to sign a consent form prior to the experiment. If this was not completed, participants were thanked for the time and signed out. Participants were asked to engage in an experimental task which took approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Participants were first asked demographic questions about eyesight; if they were colourblind and whether they had normal/corrected to normal vision. Then, they were asked to complete a cognitive task that is designed to test internal cognitive processes. The cognitive task consisted of being shown a set of coloured images of everyday objects and living things. Followed by an arithmetic phase. After that, participants were asked to complete another phase which focused on free recall. Here they were provided boxes to recall as many items as possible. After the experiment they were given a debrief, as well as being provided with a unique ID number. Individuals could react differently to stimuli so appropriate signposting and sources of support were provided at the end of the study in case anyone was distressed with anything regarding the study.

Ethical Considerations

            When completing the experiment, participants were encouraged to take breaks and wear contacts or glasses if necessary to reduce eyestrain. All participants were treated with respect and treated fairly without discrimination. Due to the nature of the experiment, a little deception at the beginning of the experiment was used so the participants did not know the outcome of the experiment, this will reduce biases (Bortolotti & Mameli, 2006). Potential harm was evaluated, with the benefits outweighing the negatives.

Ethical approval was granted on 20.03.2024 by the University Research Ethics sub-committee. All participants had the right to withdraw from the study for up to two weeks after the data was collected. Data was recorded and stored safely. Confidentiality and protection of the participant was ensured, as well as the researcher. The University will be responsible as they hold the data under data protection legislation. If anyone had queries, they were instructed to contact the University’s Data Protection Officer. All data collected was anonymised and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act (2018). Standards were followed by the British Psychological Society (Oates et al., 2021). Participants are also encouraged to read the University’s privacy policy.

 

 

Results

A reliability analysis was performed on the animate (M= 3.32 SD=3.15) and inanimate items(M=2.47 SD=2.87), having a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of (α = 0.90), indicating an acceptable level of reliability (Amirrudin et al., 2021). A Shapiro-Wilk test was conducted to test for normality revealing that both animate and inanimate stimuli were not normally distributed W(19)= .78, p, .001. Therefore, a non-parametric test was used instead of a Paired T-Test.

The Wilcoxon signed rank test revealed that the animate images (md= 0.25 n=19) were significantly higher than inanimate images (md 0.09= n=19) meaning they were recalled more than inanimate images. z= -1.48, p=0.14, with a small effect size, r= -0.08. The p value was over 0.5, meaning there is a statistically significant effect on scores.

 

Discussion

Due to the distribution of the data being not normally distributed, this violated the assumptions of a parametric test. Therefore, a non-parametric approach was used. Specifically, a Wilcoxon signed rank test was utilized to compare the means of the two conditions (Fay & Proschan, 2010). A paired t-test would have been used if the data had met the assumptions of normality. However, given that the data was skewed, a non-parametric test was used.

 

The present study investigated the recall of animate and inanimate images, with a focus on understanding potential differences in memory between these categories. The findings revealed a significant difference in recall performance, with animate images being better recalled than inanimate images. This outcome aligns with previous research, suggesting that animate stimuli are more effectively encoded and retained in memory compared to inanimate stimuli (Leding, 2020).

Leding (2020) proposed that cognitive systems are finely tuned to detect animate stimuli, which is support by the results of the experiment. The results align with a functionalist view of memory, which states that memory systems have evolved to prioritize information that is most relevant for survival and adaptive behaviour (Bonin et al., 2014).

 

The experiment was a useful tool for investigating memory mechanisms and a deeper understanding of this phenomenon (Cleary, 2018). For future research, age demographics could have been considered to investigate potential effects on memory performance (Garlitch et al., 2023). Research indicates that memory tends to decline with age (Wilson et al., 2020; Wrigglesworth et al., 2022). Therefore, incorporating age as a demographic variable would have allowed for an examination to see if age impacts memory recall.

 

The sample representativeness is also an issue with the study, which is a fundamental methodological issue in social sciences (Hultsch, 2002). The study consisted of only psychology students. Therefore, is not representative to the broader population which limits the generalisation of findings (Stratton, 2021). Convenience sampling can lack generalizability and cause bias in the sample, making it one of the main drawbacks of convenience sampling (Emerson 2021; Stratton, 2021).

 

Individual differences may be a limitation to this study. While some participants might possess fast typing skills, others may take longer to type their recalled items (Lindsey & Logan, 2021). This could falsely suggest a difference in memory performance, even though all participants might have the same level of knowledge (Bouriga & Olive, 2021) Hence, individuals who type quickly might appear to have a memory advantage, potentially skewing the results (Özer & Göksun, 2020).

 

Overall, the current findings have contributed to the literature, supporting the belief that animate stimuli are privileged in memory processing, potentially due to their evolutionary significance and relevance for adaptive behaviour. Memory recall tests focusing on animacy provide valuable insights into cognitive functioning and memory processes, also acknowledging potential limitations and biases. These finding contribute to the understanding that humans have better memory for animate items compared to inanimate ones, enriching existing data.

 

References

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Appendix

Inanimate stimuli:

 

 

 

 

Animate stimuli: