Memory For Spatial Location Research Articles

The Effect of Active versus Passive Exploration on Memory for Spatial Location in Children

The effect of active exploration upon memory for spatial location of an event was assessed for children at 2 age levels. Each child took a walk through the same unfamiliar hallway in search of a hidden object which he was later asked to relocate. Half the children were accompanied by an adult holding their hand (passive condition), while the other half proceeded on their own with an adult following behind (active condition). An age x condition interaction revealed that active exploration significantly improved performance of the 3- and 4-year-old group while not affecting the performance of the 9- and 10-year-olds. The 3- and 4-year-olds in the active condition, however, were still significantly less accurate than the older children, despite their experience of self-directed exploration. The results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that self-directed activity serves to increase attention of preoperational children to relevant topological cues in the environment, whereas concrete operational children, due to their knowledge of projective and Euclidean space, demonstrate increased capacity to efficiently encode spatial information regardless of the mode of exploration.

Spatial memory in rats: Resistance to retroactive interference

Treatments that interfere with animals’ short-term retention (e.g., in delayed matching-to-sample) were studied using a spatial memory task. Rats performed in an eight-arm radial maze in which choosing each arm without repetition was the optimal behavior. Performances were interrupted between fourth and fifth choices for a delay of 15 sec to 2 min. A variety of events occurring during the delay interval did not disrupt memories for prior choices (as assessed by the accuracy of postdelay choices). The ineffective treatments included variations in visual and auditory environments, removal from the maze, food consumed during the delay, a distinctive odor added to the maze, or combinations of these manipulations. Additionally, performance on another spatial task (a four-arm maze) during the delay between Choices 4 and 5 did not interfere with performance in the eight-arm maze. These findings suggest that rats’ memories for spatial locations are immune to retroactive interference, at least within the range of conditions reported, and that the rat can successfully segregate memories for spatial locations established in different contexts.

Distance Distortions in Memory for Spatial Locations

Distance Distortions in Memory for Spatial Locations

Distance Distortions in Memory for Spatial Locations

The present study examined developmental differences in the effect of route extensity on the memory for the locations of objects in a spatial array. Kindergarten and adult subjects were trained to remember the locations of 4 objects. During this training, objects were either connected by a combination of indirect, looped train tracks and direct train tracks (experimental subjects) or connected by entirely direct train-track routes (control subjects). Analyses of actual interobject distances, from subjects' reproductions of object locations on a response board (without train tracks), revealed that children, but not adults, distort distance in terms of the nature of travel observed between objects. Further testing revealed that differences in the amount of time taken for travel could not account for the results obtained with children.

Methodological problems with the use of the retroactive interference design to infer what is stored

The retroactive interference paradigm has been used in a variety of settings to investigate the nature of the representation of memory. Much of the research using this paradigm is methodologically flawed because it involves treatment comparisons which are inappropriate. It is argued that comparisons must be made between presentation conditions having the same interpolated activity and that, in addition, evidence is required that the differences are not confounded by acquisition level differences if one is to infer mode-specific interference and representation. The methodological issues are discussed in detail and the utility of the retroactive interference design is questioned. Studies employing the design are reviewed, and several conclusions are drawn: (1) there has been no unambiguous demonstration of visual mode-specific interference, (2) there has been no clear demonstration that imagery instructions produce memories that are more susceptible to visual than to auditory interpolation, and (3)no clear demonstrations are yet available that memory for spatial location is more susceptible to visual interference than memory for letters.

Environmental differentiation and familiarity as determinants of children's memory for spatial location.

Environmental differentiation and familiarity as determinants of children's memory for spatial location.