The breadth of animacy in memory: New evidence from prospective memory

Studies using retrospective memory tasks have revealed that animates/living beings are better remembered than are inanimates/nonliving things (the animacy effect). However, considering that memory is foremost future oriented, we hypothesized that the animacy effect would also occur in prospective memory (i.e., memory for future intentions). Using standard prospective memory (PM) procedures, we explored this hypothesis by manipulating the animacy status of the PM targets. Study 1a reports data collected from an American sample; these results were then replicated with a Portuguese sample (Study 1b). Study 2 employed a new procedure, and data were collected from a broader English-speaking sample. In these three studies, animate (vs. inanimate) targets consistently led to a better PM performance, revealing, for the first time, that the animacy advantage extends to PM. These results strengthen the adaptive approach to memory and stress the need to consider animacy as an important variable in memory studies.