Boundaries of Semantic Distraction: Dominance and Lexicality Act at Retrieval

Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction. Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1) and occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech is discussed

More than a list: what outdoor free listings of landscape categories reveal about commonsense geographic concepts and memory search strategies

Categorization is central to abstraction from real world geographic phenomena to computation representations, and as such has been the subject of considerable research. We report on one common approach, free listing, in an outdoor setting and explore terms elicited in response to the question ‘What is there for you in a landscape?’. We collected term lists, and explanations for the strategies used from 89 participants in two mountain and one parkland setting. We analyzed results not only using term frequency, but also by cognitive saliency, exploring list structures, and building aggregated networks visualizing links between terms. We observed memory search strategies, such as exploiting and switching semantic clusters in our data, with participants using for example not only the local setting to start clusters, but also memories of familiar landscapes to switch between clusters. Our results reveal that simple free listing experiments can help us understand how categories are linked, and also highlight ways in which landscapes are conceptualized