The Grid Learning Task: Examining the Effects of Overlap Type on New Learning Within Healthy Adult Participants

In everyday life, people often need to remember the locations of objects, such as where a car was parked on a given day. A key question is whether a similar prior experience (e.g., parking in the same lot the previous day) facilitates or interferes with memory for a new event. The Grid Learning Task (GLT) was developed to address this question. In this task, participants study a set of objects arranged on a grid and are then asked to place them in their correct locations on an empty version of the grid. Two overlap conditions are of primary interest: the Location overlap condition and the Object overlap condition. In the Location overlap condition, different objects are presented in the same spatial configuration as the previous grid. In the Object overlap condition, the same objects are presented in a different spatial configuration. The current protocol modifies the original task to a within-subjects design in which participants experience all overlap types. By comparing learning attempts across the Location overlap and Object overlap conditions, the GLT provides insight into how different forms of overlap with prior experiences influence new learning. Findings from this task generally show that overlapping object identities increase the number of attempts required to learn a subsequent grid, reflecting memory interference. In contrast, overlapping object locations reduce the number of attempts required to learn a subsequent grid, reflecting memory facilitation. Overall, the GLT provides a framework for examining how prior experiences influence new learning by revealing both interfering and facilitatory effects.