Baguley et al. (2006) have demonstrated that location memories are retrieved exclusively: when a person has two or more memories for an object’s location (which show the same object from different perspectives), only one representation can be retrieved at any one time. Whilst this finding is counterintuitive it has received some empirical support in the literature, although exclusivity has only been demonstrated using simplified stimuli. The central aim of this thesis was to probe the finding of exclusivity in memory for object location. A series of experiments addressed this aim. Experiment 1 probed the exclusivity hypothesis using visually enriched stimuli in both an incidental and intentional paradigm. Experiment 2 explored the effect of removing an anchor (point of reference) at retrieval. Experiment 3 investigated the role and effectiveness of different types of recall cues in the current paradigm. Experiment 4 considered the function and importance of the anchors with the current experiment framework, and Experiment 5 attempted to encourage participants to use multiple frames of reference to locate a target object. The principal findings of the thesis were: 1) further evidence of exclusivity, 2) increased recall accuracy without a change in retrieval strategy, 3) anchors might not always be necessary for location retrieval but might be useful when identifying the target object, and 4) that target object identity and target object location appear to be tied together. Therefore, the thesis conclusions are that the finding of exclusivity is robust and that further research is needed on the role usefulness of the anchors in memory for object location judgements.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:629193 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Clark, D. P. A. |
| Publisher | Nottingham Trent University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/232/ |
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