| Abstract: | Examines the effects of intentionality and attention to contextual organization in spatial memory. Middle-aged and older women were asked either to study the placement of objects in a contextually organized panorama or to engage in incidental orienting activities, which gave them exposure to the array without awareness that subsequent reconstruction would be required. The incidental conditions required differing degrees of attention to contextual spatial relations. The pattern of results was similar for both age groups. Although some spatial location information was remembered without intention, even when subjects were not required to attend to spatial relations in the array, reconstruction was enhanced by intentionality or by the goal-relevant activity of attending to contextual spatial relations. Orienting activities involving attention to contextual spatial organization or relations between items produced better reconstruction than orienting activities requiring attention only to individual items. In fact, the incidental conditions requiring attention to spatial relations produced performance equal to that in the intentional condition. Although intentionality was not necessary for good reconstruction on a contextually organized task, attention to relations between items was necessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
