Subjective hierarchies in spatial memory.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and CognitionPublished 1 January 1989
Timothy P. McNamara, James K. Hardy, Stephen C. Hirtle
Citations287
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SJR score1.23
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TL;DR
These findings indicate that spatial memories have a hierarchical component, even when physical and perceptual boundaries are nonexistent, and supports spreading-activation theories of retrieval but provides evidence against several "non-spreading-activation" theories.
Abstract
Two experiments investigated the structure of spatial memories. Subjects learned locations of objects in spatial layouts (Experiment 1) or locations of object names on maps (Experiment 2). Physical and perceptual boundaries were absent in these spatial arrays. Subjects then participated in three tasks: item recognition, in which the variable of interest was spatial priming; free and cued recall; and Euclidean distance estimation. Ordered-tree analysis of individual subjects' recall protocols produced hierarchical trees consistent with regularities in output order. Spatial priming and distance estimations depended on whether pairs of objects appeared in the same subtree or in different subtrees. These findings indicate that spatial memories have a hierarchical component, even when physical and perceptual boundaries are nonexistent. Priming also increased with depth of clustering in ordered trees. This result supports spreading-activation theories of retrieval but provides evidence against several "non-spreading-activation" theories.
Keywords
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