Experimental examination of proximate explanations underlying the animacy effect in episodic memory.

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Edgar Erdfelder; Professorin Dr. Siri-Maria Kamp, Ph.D.; Dr. Meike Kroneisen
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401384275

Natural selection leads to one physical design becoming prevalent over another because of its fitness value. It helps to solve an adaptive problem and increases the chances of survival for the organism (Darwin, 1859). Therefore, the assumption was made that our memory system was shaped by evolutionary processes in such a way that our ancestors were able to solve important adaptive problems (Nairne, 2005; Nairne & Pandeirada, 2008). Interestingly, recent research showed that certain contexts facilitate memory particularly well. The so-called survival processing effect is a strong memory advantage for word-material that has been processed for its relevance to a survival context (Nairne, Thompson, & Pandeirada, 2007). It has been shown that one important underlying proximate mechanism of the survival processing advantage is richness of encoding (e.g., Kroneisen & Erdfelder, 2011). However, memory has also been shown to be sensitive to certain content. The animacy effect refers to enhanced memory for animate over inanimate items ((Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, Cogdill, & LeBreton, 2013). This effect appears to be of great importance, as animacy was found to be even a better predictor of later memory performance than, for example, imagination, emotionality, or concreteness (Nairne et al., 2013). However, the underlying proximate mechanisms of the animacy effect are not yet clearly understood. The goal of this project is to further explore the episodic memory processes underlying the animacy effect. This should allow a deeper theoretical understanding and also a better prediction of the occurrence conditions of the effect. This is of great interest in so far as word lists that also contain animated items are very often used in memory research.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants