Animates are better remembered than inanimates: further evidence from word and picture stimuli

Abstract

In three experiments, we showed that animate entities are remembered better than inanimate entities. Experiment 1 revealed better recall for words denoting animate than inanimate items. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with the use of pictures. In Experiment 3, we found better recognition for animate than for inanimate words. Importantly, we also found a higher recall rate of “remember” than of “know” responses for animates, whereas the recall rates were similar for the two types of responses for inanimate items. This finding suggests that animacy enhances not only the quantity but also the quality of memory traces, through the recall of contextual details of previous experiences (i.e., episodic memory). Finally, in Experiment 4, we tested whether the animacy effect was due to animate items being richer in terms of sensory features than inanimate items. The findings provide further evidence for the functionalist view of memory championed by Nairne and coworkers (Nairne, 2010; Nairne & Pandeirada, Cognitive Psychology, 61 :1–22, 2010a, 2010b).

The effect of animacy on metamemory

“…The results of recall performance replicated the findings of previous studies (Bonin et al, 2014;Nairne et al, 2013;VanArsdall et al, 2013;VanArsdall et al, 2014), and expanded them to Chinese words. More critically, animacy was used as a cue for metamemory judgments, with participants assigning higher JOLs to animate than they did to inanimate words.…”

“…Recent research by Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, Cogdill, and LeBreton (2013) has demonstrated that animacy is also a critical mnemonic dimension, and animate words are remembered better than are inanimate words. This is referred to as the animacy effect (see also Bonin, Gelin, & Bugaiska, 2014;VanArsdall, Nairne, Pandeirada, & Blunt, 2013;VanArsdall, Nairne, Pandeirada, & Cogdill, 2014). This finding is in line with the functionalist view of memory put forward by Nairne and his colleagues Nairne, Pandeirada, Gregory, & VanArsdall, 2009;Nairne, Pandeirada, & Thompson, 2008), which states that the human memory system has been tuned to solve critical adaptive problems.…”

“…In the present case, perhaps the ease with which animate or inanimate items are processed directly influences people's JOLs. For example, Bonin et al (2014) had participants engage in an animate-inanimate categorization task. Animate words were categorized reliably faster than were inanimate words, suggesting that animate items are easier to process than are inanimate items, and such processing fluency, in turn, could lead to higher JOLs for animate than for inanimate items.…”

Late L2ers can acquire grammatical features that do not occur in their L1: Evidence from the effect of animacy on verb agreement in L1 Chinese

“…Animates are better remembered than inanimates (Bonin, Gelin, & Bugaiska, 2014). The distinction between animates and inanimates is fundamental in human cognition (Rakison & Poulin-Dubois, 2001) and is incorporated in the agreement systems of many languages (Corbett, 2000(Corbett, , 2006.…”

12th Biannual conference of the German cognitive science society (Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft)

“…The dashed game objects in problem states on the bottom of the figure indicate the game object which was moved Note that in the event sentences all referents described by the grammatical subjects were animate, whereas in the state sentences all subjects were inanimate. Many empirical studies investigating animacy suggest that animate objects are remembered better than inanimate objects (see, for example, Bonin et al 2014). Therefore, shorter RTs on the subject position of event sentences than of state sentences were expected, resulting in a main effect of animacy.…”