a CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de Fisiología , Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE) , Buenos Aires , Argentina.
b Universidad de Buenos Aires , Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales , Buenos Aires , Argentina.
Memory. 2019 Jul;27(6):820-828. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2019.1572195. Epub 2019 Feb 5.
It was previously shown that words representing living things are better remembered than those representing nonliving things. Here we address the influence of animacy on novel word memory formation in adults, dissecting its effect on semantic and orthographic learning. Participants received training on a set of new picture-name-description mappings corresponding to animate or inanimate items, simulating word learning in the first language. The integration of novel words was indexed in a semantic judgment task, performed at 30 min or 48 h after learning. Results show that novel word forms and meanings corresponding to animate items are better recalled than inanimate ones. In addition, animate items are processed faster than inanimate items in a semantic judgment task 30 min after learning, while the speed advantage is not evident in the long-term. Thus, animacy is a pervasive memory enhancer during novel word acquisition but its effects on lexical processing are short-lived.
先前的研究表明，代表生物的词汇比代表非生物的词汇更容易被记住。在这里，我们探讨了生物性对成年人新单词记忆形成的影响，分析了它对语义和正字法学习的影响。参与者接受了一套与有生命或无生命物品相对应的新图片-名称-描述映射的训练，模拟了第一语言中的单词学习。在学习后 30 分钟或 48 小时进行语义判断任务，以评估新单词的整合情况。结果表明，与无生命物品相比，代表有生命物品的新单词形式和含义更容易被回忆起来。此外，在学习 30 分钟后的语义判断任务中，有生命的物品比无生命的物品处理得更快，而在长期记忆中，这种速度优势并不明显。因此，在新单词习得过程中，生物性是一种普遍的记忆增强剂，但它对词汇处理的影响是短暂的。
