The animacy (bias) effect in recognition: testing the influence of intentionality of learning and retrieval quality

The animacy effect, a memory advantage for animate/living over inanimate/non-living items, is well-documented in free recall, but unclear in recognition memory. This might relate to the encoding tasks that have been used and/or to an unequal influence of animacy on the processes underlying recognition (recollection or familiarity). This study reports a recognition memory experiment, coupled with a remember/know procedure. An intentional and two incidental learning conditions (one animacy-related and one animacy-unrelated) were used. No animacy effect was found in discriminability (A') irrespectively of the encoding condition. Still, different mechanisms in incidental and intentional conditions conducted to said result. Overall, animates (vs. inanimates) elicited more hits and also more false alarms. Moreover, participants tended to assign more remember responses to animate (vs. inanimate) hits, denoting higher recollection for the former. These findings are suggestive of an animacy bias in recognition, which was stronger in the animacy-related encoding condition. Ultimate and proximate mechanisms underlying the animacy effect are examined.