The Effects of Animacy as a Mnemonic Device and the Use of the Serial Position Effect

Abstract

The experiment was conducted in order to show that animate nouns are remembered better than

inanimate nouns as well as the effect primacy and recency have on memory. It involved a series

of 31 words that were presented on a PowerPoint slide that consisted of animate, animate with

face and inanimate words. After this was completed, a distraction task was conducted in order to

stop the serial position effect, the words, that were remembered, were recorded by each

participant. The results showed that animate words did in fact take priority over inanimate words

and the serial position affect was present in this study.

Introduction

The mind, according to the cognitive perspective, is like a computer. It describes memory

as a collection of systems and processes in which the mind (‘computer’) transforms information

into different memory stores (‘system’s hardware’) and retrieves it using different programs

(‘software’) – this is known as the standard model of memory[ CITATION Bur15 \l 3081 ].

Functionally, the standard model of memory, consists of three structural components –

sensory registers, short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM). This model

involves encoding and transferring information from one store to the next and retrieving it from

LTM when needed [ CITATION Bur15 \l 3081 ]

The serial position effect is the tendency to recollect information that has been presented

at the start or the end rather than the information presented in the middle [ CITATION Bur15 \l

3081 ]. This is a result of the primacy and recency effect. When a word is presented in a list of

multiple words, the first words are regarded as ‘important’ by the mind, thus by the time of recall
the words are transferred to LTM. Items at the end of the list are still in STM at the time of

recall.

Many studies have been conducted on memory using free-recall tasks. This involves

participants being presented a list of words, one at a time, they must then recall as many as

possible after a distractor task [ CITATION Bur15 \l 3081 ]. Which is why, in this experiment,

four buffer words were used to ensure that the phenomenon of the serial position effect did not

have a significant effect on the results. A distractor task may also be used in order to stop serial

position of the words to affecting the outcome.

There are systematic strategies for retrieving information from LTM, these strategies are

known as mnemonic devices. One example of a recently founded mnemonic device is ‘animacy’.

The study of memory is a vital part of research in psychology as it allows researchers to

understand how memory works as well as aid in improving any problems that have risen or may

rise in the future. One of the main aspects of memory that has been studied is the animacy affect.

Bonin (2013) states that the animacy effect refers to ‘the observation that animate stimuli

are remembered better than inanimate words’. Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, humans

are selectively designed, from infancy, to process and remember animate objects [ CITATION

Nai13 \l 3081 ]. This statement is in accordance with the functionalist perspective of memory,

whereby Nairne and coworkers stated that human memory has been designed to solve any

physiological problems that they may be faced with, for example, locating food and water,

finding a mate to reproduce with or finding shelter) [CITATION Bon13 \l 3081 ].

In addition to the comparison between animate and inanimate nouns, this experiment will

also examine animate with face nouns.

The aim of this experiment is determine the affect animacy and inanimacy has on the

human memory in regards to nouns as well as determining the effect serial position (primacy or

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recency) has on memory. Using the information studied from previous studies, it can be

hypothesized that if the words presented consisted of animate, animate with face and inanimate

nouns, then the animate nouns and in particular animate objects with a face would take priority

over those that were inanimate nouns. This can be assumed as previous studies show that human

‘memory systems are selectively tuned to process and remember animate objects’[ CITATION

Nai13 \l 3081 ] , while human memory associates animates with a face with survival processes –

mating and predators.

It can also be hypothesized, that from the studies reviewed, the first nine words and the

last nine words will be easily remembered in comparison to those nine in the middle due to the

serial position effect.

Like Nairne et al (2013) and Bonin, Gelin & Bugaiska (2014), the words for this

experiment have been specifically chosen in accordance to a number of characteristics –

concreteness, imageability, subjective frequency, emotional valence, number of letters and word

frequency. Concreteness refers to how much the object can be directly sensed, the imageability is

the number of images the words can generate in the mind’s eye, the subjective frequency refers

to the familiarity of the word to a normal group of people. The emotional valence is how much

the word evokes positive or negative feelings and lastly the word frequency refers to the

frequency of the occurrence of the word broadcasted in the world on a logarithmic scale.

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 Method

Participants

The participants in this investigation were 358 undergraduate psychology students whom

attended Griffith University; these participants consisted of 123 males, 234 females and one

other. This experiment was conducted as a part of a laboratory experiment during their normal

tutorials. Their mean age was 20.20 with the range being from 16 to 62.

Materials

During this investigation, three types of stimuli were presented. The first condition of 9

animate words, the second condition consisted of 9 animate with face words while the third

condition consisted of 9 inanimate words.

In total, there were 31 words presented on a PowerPoint slide via a projector, these words

included:

 Dolphin  Bird  Girl

 Shed  Lawyer  Crab
 Bee  Truck  Door
 Book  Horse  Koala
 Baby  Chair  Wolf
 Cat  Slug  Leaf
 Tree  Mask  Letter
 Plate  Clown  Dress
 Bath  Spider  Teacher
 Lion  Brush
 Flower  Duck

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However, the first two and the last two words (dolphin, shed, dress, teacher) were excluded from

the list as they were “buffer words”. “Buffer words” helped the primacy effect where the words

in short term memory could be rehearsed enough to be transferred into long term memory.

Procedure

Participants prepared data sheets used for recording the results of two tasks. Instructions

for the experiment were explained by the class tutor. The tutor explained that the participants

were told to remember as many words as possible from the 31 words that were displayed. These

words flashed on the screen on a PowerPoint slide for 5 seconds. After this experiment was

completed, a distraction task was carried out. This involved a 20 numbers between one and nine

that faded into and out on the screen over three seconds each.

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Design

The independent variable, which was the types of words that were used, consisted of

three levels. These three levels included inanimate, animate and animate with face words. These

levels were manipulated within the subjects. The dependent variable was the number of words

correctly recalled.

Results

Table 1: Number of Words Recalled by Serial Position and Type

800

700

600

500 Animate/Face
Animate
400 Inanimate

300

200

100

0
First 9 Middle 9 Last 9

Table 1 shows the number of words recalled by the serial position and type. It is clear that the

dominant type of words recalled was animate with face whereas the least remembered was

inanimate. In relation to serial position of the words, the first nine words were remembered more

than the last nine and even more so than the nine words in the middle.
 Figure 1: Percentage of Words Recalled by Type

25.6

40.8

33.6

Animate/Face Animate Inanimate

Figure 1 shows a pie graph that presents the percentage of words recalled (not including buffer

words). As shown above, animate with face has the highest percentage of 40.8 while animate has

33.6 and inanimate has the lowest percentage of 25.6 percent.

As shown in Appendix 1 there was no significant difference in the variables of the words tested.

Discussion

The role of animacy in mnemonic processing has surprisingly received little attention in

literature [CITATION Bon13 \l 3081 ], however, recently it has gained the interest of

psychologists. In more recent times, several studies, including this, have found that the mind is

able to use the dimension of animacy as mnemonic device where animate items lead to better

retention than inanimate items. It was first hypothesized that animate objects take priority over

inanimate objects in regards to memory. This statement is further supported by Figure 1 where

inanimate words had the lowest recall percentage in comparison to animate and animate with

face. Human memory has evolved to recognise and recall any information in regards to their

fitness and survival; animates are more important to survival, thus retained easier. This outcome

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replicates and extends the previous findings from Nairne (2013) and Bonin, Gelin, & Bugaiska,

(2014) that states animate task priority over inanimate.

The next hypothesis predicted that due to the primacy and recency effect, those words presented

at the beginning and end of the list will have a higher recall percentage, this statement was

supported as shown in Table 1. Table 1 show resemblence to the serial position curve (Appendix

2), where there is a larger primacy effect than recency effect. Although a distractor task was

introduced to lower the risk of any influecne of the serial position effect, it still, to some extent

had the same effect as if a distractor task was not introduced.

Throughout this investigation, there were several limitations faced. Some included the

fact that the experiment was conducted in a number of groups, therefore it can be assumed the

there was the chance of cheating that would have made. There is also the limitation of

generalisibility; as the experiement was only conducted on psychology undergradutes there is the

chance that the results may not be generalisble outside of the study. Another limitation may be,

as memory declines with age, those that are older may have been less likely to recall more words

than those that were younger.

It is expected that there will be more studies in the future that not only test the animacy

effect, but also how the serial position effect affects the human memory. Further studies could

involve including pictures instead of words or changing the word dimensions used. However,

future studies may be faced with several problems, one being

Remaining issues for future studies may include that although it is assumed that the animacy

effect can be explained as a mnemonic device, it may actually be the result of attentional

mechanisms rather than a mnemonic modification [ CITATION Bon13 \l 3081 ].

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 Reference

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 Appendices

Appendix C

Means (Standard Deviations) for the Three Word Group Lists for Matching Variables

Animate/Face Animate Inanimate Results of F test comparing lists

Concreteness 4.53(0.33) 4.73(0.17) 4.67(0.33) F(2,24) = 1.19, p = .32
Imageability 4.55(0.48) 4.51(0.41) 4.47(0.29) F(2,24) = 0.07, p = .93

Subjective frequency 3.30(1.03) 3.36(0.99) 3.96(0.70) F(2,24) = 1.39, p = .27

Emotional Valence 3.61(0.49) 3.27(0.99) 3.38(0.59) F(2,24) = 0.51, p = .61

Number of letters 4.44(0.88) 4.33(1.00) 4.67(0.71) F(2,24) = 0.34, p = .71
Zipf-value (word frequency) 4.52(0.63) 4.36(0.45) 4.65(0.42) F(2,24) = 0.80, p = .46