Recognition benefits from the reinstatement of a spatial representation of motoric processing

This study investigated the effect of reinstating the spatial component of motoric processing on recognition memory. In 3 experiments, college students encoded digit strings during a study phase and recognized them during a test phase. During the study phase, participants viewed the digit strings and, in some cases, processed the items motorically by entering them on the numeric keypad of a keyboard. A recognition benefit was found when motoric processing at study was reinstated at test. Additional results showed that recognition could be based on a spatial analogue of the keypressing pattern used to encode the digit strings. These results suggest that the spatial component of a motoric response may serve as a recognition cue for an action. Consistent with the transfer-appropriate processing framework, reinstatement of the entry response or a spatial representation of it improved recognition by increasing the overlap between study and test processing.