Abstract
Reaction time (RT) in simple categorization tasks was predicted to vary as a function of the relatedness among environmental items. Differences in RT were interpreted as reflecting differences in proximity or strength of associations in environmental memory. In Experiment 1, subjects sorted names of familiar local buildings according to which seemed to go together. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed major clusters whose members were related in function and, within these, smaller clusters of buildings related by spatial proximity. In Experiment 2, subjects responded “Yes” if two items on a trial were both local buildings and “No” if one item was local and one nonlocal. Subjects responded significantly faster to pairs taken from the cluster analysis that were related by both spatial proximity and function than they did to unrelated pairs or pairs related in function only. In Experiment 3, a free-associaton task identified related pairs of spatially proximate, functionally dissimilar environmental items. In Experiment 4, RTs to these pairs did not differ from RTs to pairs of spatially proximate, functionally dissimilar items or from RTs to pairs unrelated functionally and spatially. Spatial proximity and functional similarity together contribute to the organization in memory of buildings in the physical environment.
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This research is a portion of the senior author’s doctoral dissertation completed at Dartmouth College.
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Merrill, A.A., Baird, J.C. Semantic and spatial factors in environmental memory. Memory & Cognition 15, 101–108 (1987). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197021
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197021