Animacy and threat influence location memory in adults

A substantial body of research indicates that fitness-relevant entities (e.g., animate and threatening entities) are more readily recalled than nonfitness-relevant entities (e.g., inanimate and nonthreatening entities). However, little research has examined whether these effects persist when memory for their spatial location is tested even though this is an important issue for the ultimate explanation of these biases. To address this issue further, two experiments were conducted to examine whether animates (Experiment 1) and threats (Experiment 2) could benefit from a processing advantage in location memory. In both experiments, adults were asked to play Memory games (concentration games) on a digital tablet. The number of errors made in matching pairs of cards was recorded, as was the mean Euclidean distance between the location of the correct card and the location of the selected card in cases of error. We also investigated the extent to which the emotional dimensions of the stimuli (i.e., arousal, valence, and emotional intensity) could act as potential proximate mechanisms underlying the effects of animacy and threat on location memory. Consistent with the adaptive memory view (Nairne, 2016), our findings indicated that both animacy and threat enhanced location memory in adults. Furthermore, emotional intensity emerged as a valuable emotional variable for further investigation, as it consistently correlated with free-recall scores for both the animacy and threat effects.