Abstract
The memory game paradigm is a behavioral procedure to explore the relationship between language, spatial memory, and object knowledge. Using two different versions of the paradigm, spatial language use and memory for object location are tested under different, experimentally manipulated conditions. This allows us to tease apart proposed models explaining the influence of object knowledge on spatial language (e.g., spatial demonstratives), and spatial memory, as well as understanding the parameters that affect demonstrative choice and spatial memory more broadly. Key to the development of the method was the need to collect data on language use (e.g., spatial demonstratives: "this/that") and spatial memory data under strictly controlled conditions, while retaining a degree of ecological validity. The language version (section 3.1) of the memory game tests how conditions affect language use. Participants refer verbally to objects placed at different locations (e.g., using spatial demonstratives: "this/that red circle"). Different parameters can be experimentally manipulated: the distance from the participant, the position of a conspecific, and for example whether the participant owns, knows, or sees the object while referring to it. The same parameters can be manipulated in the memory version of the memory game (section 3.2). This version tests the effects of the different conditions on object-location memory. Following object placement, participants get 10 seconds to memorize the object's location. After the object and location cues are removed, participants verbally direct the experimenter to move a stick to indicate where the object was. The difference between the memorized and the actual location shows the direction and strength of the memory error, allowing comparisons between the influences of the respective parameters.
Highlights
IntroductionThe relationship between language and non-linguistic representations is a fundamental topic in the cognitive sciences[1,2,3,4]
Past methods used to elicit spatial demonstratives or the comprehension of them range from those that have high ecological validity but low experimental control to those that have high experimental control but low ecological validity
The expectation of an objects' location can be elicited by general object knowledge, or language used to refer to the object
Summary
The relationship between language and non-linguistic representations is a fundamental topic in the cognitive sciences[1,2,3,4]. In exploring this relationship, we focus on spatial cognition. Key to the development of the method was the desire to retain high experimental validity while ensuring that participants use language naturalistically in (real) three-dimensional space without being aware that their language was being tested. In past linguistic investigations of the influence of distance on demonstratives, the perceptual basis of this distance distinction is often not adequately considered. The use of photographs in some past studies manipulating distance where the whole image on the screen is in peripersonal space is arguably not a fair test of the influence of distance on demonstratives as motivated from the basic brain system distinction. When the purpose of the study is revealed, participants often describe how they use demonstratives in ways that do not necessary accord with their own actual behavior during the task
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