Savannah Waymer¹, Susan Wardle¹, Elanor Chang^1,2, Chris Baker¹; ¹National Institute of Mental Health, ²Cornell University

We spend much of our everyday life physically interacting with real objects, yet most research on visual memory is conducted on words and images. In this study we examined short- and long- term memory for everyday objects as a function of the type of real-world experience (haptic & visual, or visual only). Participants explored 24 real objects (e.g. sneaker, clock, wooden birdhouse) for 30 seconds each, in random order. Participants in the visual group viewed the objects on a turntable and controlled the rotation speed and direction; participants in the haptic group held and freely explored the objects. Following the exploration phase, participants completed a distractor task (digit span). Participants were videorecorded during both exploration and memory phases. The first memory task was free recall of the explored objects. Next, participants were given verbal prompts of the object categories (e.g. “Do you remember any jewelry?”) to help remember any additional objects; two prompts were foil categories. Lastly, participants performed a computer-based recognition task. The task consisted of photographs of the explored objects in 3 different orientations (72 images) and similar unexplored objects (foils) in 3 orientations (72 images). Participants returned 2 months (+/- 2 weeks) later to repeat the memory tasks. During immediate recall, participants recalled the objects with varying amounts of visual detail, with an advantage for the haptic group. Short term recognition memory performance was higher than recall for both groups, with a modest decline at the 2-month follow-up. Surprisingly, during the delayed 2-month recall, participants in both groups generated many false memories of objects that were not presented. In conclusion, we find that memory for real-world objects is modulated by the type of experience, and that real-world experience with an object does not impact the generation of false memories.

Acknowledgements: This research was supported (in part) by the Intramural Research Program of the NIMH (ZIAMH002909).