Priorities for representation: Task settings and object interaction both influence object memory

Abstract

Following an active task, the memory representations for used and unused objects are different. However, it is not clear whether these differences arise due to prioritizing objects that are task-relevant, objects that are physically interacted with, or a combination of the two factors. The present study allowed us to tease apart the relative importance of task-relevance and physical manipulation on object memory. A paradigm was designed in which objects were either necessary to complete a task (target), moved out of the way (obstructing, but interacted with), or simply present in the environment (background). Participants' eye movements were recorded with a portable tracker during the task, and they received a memory test on the objects after the task was completed. Results showed that manipulating an object is sufficient to change how information is extracted and retained from fixations, compared to background objects. Taskrelevance provides an additional influence: information is accumulated and retained differently for manipulated target objects than manipulated obstructing objects. These findings demonstrate that object memory is influenced both by whether we physically interact with an object, and the relevance of that object to our behavioral goals.Keywords Action . Perception . Memory . Intention . Real-worldIn everyday life, we perform actions in order to achieve a goal, informed by perceptual input about the current state of the environment. Despite this strong link between perception and action, it is only more recently that this has been represented in cognitive theories; in particular, those of grounded cognition. There are multiple iterations of these theories (see e.g., Wilson, 2002), but they all make the same underlying proposal: that perception and action are more than low-level input/output devices: instead, they are both dynamic and inter-related processes which allow us to navigate and work within our environment.There is growing evidence that action influences perception. Laboratory-based tasks have demonstrated how preparing an action can affect the performance of visual search tasks: for example, Fagioli, Hommel, and Schubotz (2007) showed that, depending on the gesture prepared prior to search (either pointing or grasping), detection of an oddball target stimulus was facilitated if the gesture was compatible with the relevant feature of the target. Thus, preparing pointing actions facilitated the detection of location-defined stimuli, while preparing grasping actions assisted the detection of size-defined stimuli. Similar results were found in a change detection study (Symes, Tucker, Ellis, Vainio, and Ottoboni, 2008). By preparing a particular grip type (power or precision), changes made to stimuli compatible with the size of the grip aperture were spotted faster and more accurately than changes to the grip-incompatible objects. In both cases, it is apparent that the mere preparation of a particular gesture is enough to bias attention to those items in a scene containing some fe...

Of “what” and “where” in a natural search task: Active object handling supports object location memory beyond the object’s identity

“…Object recognition speed (Harman et al, 1999;James et al, 2002) and location memory Trewartha et al, 2015) increase after object manipulation. However, there is evidence that we are not necessarily better in recalling/recognizing active compared to passive objects (Brooks et al, 1999;Harman et al, 1999;James et al, 2002) and are not always left with a better spatial representation of our surroundings after active object manipulation (Kirtley & Tatler, 2015). Within a naturalistic, real-world paradigm our study investigated the role of active object handling on identity and location memory for objects.…”

“…Within a naturalistic, real-world paradigm our study investigated the role of active object handling on identity and location memory for objects. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to compare memory performance between handled and non-handled task-relevant objects within a real-world environment, as in previous studies the nonmanipulated objects were either always irrelevant to the task (Kirtley & Tatler, 2015) or presented on a computer screen . We show that: (1) identity memory was not influenced by object handling itself, but relevant object were recalled better than irrelevant ones; (2) identity memory was highly predictive of location memory, as recalled objects were subsequently found faster (this was, however, only true for passive objects, as location memory for actively handled objects was not predicted by identity memory performance); and (3) relevant objects were found faster than irrelevant ones when actively handled, but this was not true for passive objects.…”

“…Recall and recognition memory after active exploration of a virtual environment was improved for neither object identity nor location memory -instead only the spatial layout of the virtual reality environment improved (Brooks, Attree, Rose, Clifford, & Leadbetter, 1999). No prioritization of location memory was found for physically manipulated objects in a natural task, nor for relevant compared to irrelevant ones (Kirtley & Tatler, 2015). In sum, these contradictory findings leave the question of the impact of active object handling on identity and location memory, as well as its interaction with the relevance of objects to ongoing behavior unresolved.…”

Facilitation of allocentric coding by virtue of object-semantics

“…Shifts of task-irrelevant objects hardly affected reaching behavior. Task relevance has also been shown to modulate memory performance in natural search tasks in addition to actual object interaction 19–21 . Moreover, breaking down the spatial coherence of a scene by shifting objects in opposite directions strongly reduced the effect of object shift 15 .…”

Keeping it real: Looking beyond capacity limits in visual cognition

“…In comparison to memory investigations in which memorization is the explicit task, during ecological behavior it is not necessary to constantly instruct ourselves to remember everything in our surroundings. In fact, an ever-growing body of literature provides strong evidence that very reliable representations are formed after incidental encoding during search (Castelhano & Henderson, 2005;Draschkow et al, 2014;Draschkow & Võ, 2016;Hout & Goldinger, 2010, 2012Howard, Pharaon, Körner, Smith, & Gilchrist, 2011;Olejarczyk, Luke, & Henderson, 2014;Võ & Wolfe, 2012), change detection (Utochkin & Wolfe, 2018), visual discrimination (Draschkow, Reinecke, Cunningham, & Võ, 2018), or object manipulation (Draschkow & Võ, 2017;Kirtley & Tatler, 2015). Draschkow et al (2018) investigated the capacity and detail of incidental memory, instructing participants to detect visually distorted objects among a stream of intact objects (the incidental analogue to the explicit studies of Brady et al, 2008, andCunningham et al, 2015).…”