The spatial scaffold: The effects of spatial context on memory for events.

Abstract

Events always unfold in a spatial context, leading to the claim that it serves as a scaffold for encoding and retrieving episodic memories. The ubiquitous co-occurrence of spatial context with events may induce participants to generate a spatial context when hearing scenarios of events in which it is absent. Spatial context should also serve as an excellent cue for memory retrieval. To test these predictions, participants read event scenarios involving a highly familiar or less familiar spatial context, or person, which they were asked to imagine and remember. At recall, locations were more effective memory cues than people, and both were better when they were highly familiar. Most importantly, when no locations were specified at study, participants exhibited a spontaneous tendency to generate a spatial context for the scenarios, while rarely generating a person. Events with spatial context were remembered more vividly and described in more detail than those without. Together, the results favor the view that spatial context plays a leading role in remembering events.