Gudde, H. & Coventry, K.
University of East Anglia
Spatial cognition, and with it spatial language, is crucial to almost every aspect of our lives. In our studies, we explore the relation between spatial cognition, object knowledge, and language. In a memory game procedure, participants memorized the location of objects placed on a table in front of them, under experimentally controlled, contrastive conditions like distance, ownership, visibility, familiarity, and language (Coventry, 2008; 2014; Gudde et al., 2016, 2018). The continuous nature of memory error upon recall allowed us to test the direction and strength of memory errors between the different conditions, enabling us to tease apart different models predicting an influence of object knowledge and language on memory for object location. The Expectation model suggests that spatial memory is affected by an expectation of the location, elicited via language or object knowledge - consistent with models of predictive coding (Bar, 2009; Friston, 2003). The model predicts main effects on spatial memory in which objects, for example placed with that, are misremembered to be further away than objects placed with this, irrespective of the distance from the participant. In contrast, the Congruence model, based on the embodied cognition framework (Barsalou, 2008), predicts that an effect would be driven by an (in)congruence of language and space. Many studies showed better action performance when language congruently describes a spatial situation (cf. Bonfiglioli et al., 2009; Stevens & Zhang, 2013). Extending this model to memory, it predicts the same interaction based on (in)congruence (Hommel, Musseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). For example, congruent trials in which objects are placed close by with this, or out of reach with that, should be remembered more accurately than incongruent trials (this for objects out of reach, that for objects within reach). Results of 15 different experiments support the Expectation model over the congruence account.