Arranging Objects in Space: Measuring Task-Relevant Organizational Behaviors During Goal Pursuit

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

To organise or not to organise? Understanding search strategy preferences using Lego building blocks

Humans routinely organise or reconfigure the environment as part of their everyday activities, such as placing a set of keys in a designated location to reduce the need to remember its location. This type of spatial organisation is widely thought to reduce both the physical and cognitive demands of a task to allow individuals to perform tasks more easily. Although spatial organisation can be a useful strategy when searching for items in the environment, individuals do not always choose to utilise these organisational strategies when carrying out everyday tasks. Across three experiments, we examined individuals' preference for spatial organisation in the context of a real-world search task, and the degree to which individuals engaged in time- and effort-based cost-benefit analysis to inform whether to choose between an organisation-based or non-organisation-based search strategy. We found that individuals' strategy preferences could be explained by the perceived task time associated with each strategy, but not perceived task effort. However, even statistically controlling for relative perceived task time or reported effort, participants showed a strong systematic preference against organisation prior to engaging in the task, and, post-task, a strong preference towards organisation. Implications for understanding individuals' use of spatial organisation are discussed.

Spatial Organization in Self-Initiated Visual Working Memory

Ample research in visual working memory (VWM) has demonstrated that the memorized items are maintained in integrated spatial configurations, even when the spatial context is task irrelevant. These insights were obtained in studies in which participants were provided with the information they memorized. However, the encoding of provided information is only one aspect of memory. In everyday life, individuals often construct their own memory representations, an aspect of memory we have previously termed self-initiated (SI) working memory. In this study, we employed a SI VWM task in which participants selected the visual targets they memorized. The spatial locations of the targets were task irrelevant. Nevertheless, we were interested to see whether participants would construct spatially structured memory representations, which would suggest that they intended to maintain the visual targets as integrated spatial configurations. The results of two experiments demonstrated that participants constructed spatially structured configurations relative to random displays. Specifically, participants selected visual targets in close spatial proximity and constructed spatial sequences with short distances and fewer path crossings. When asked to construct configurations for a hypothetical competitor in a memory contest, participants disrupted the spatial structure by selecting visual targets that were further apart and by increasing the distances between them, which suggests that these characteristics were under their control. At the end of each experiment, participants provided verbal descriptions of the strategies they used to construct the memory displays. While the spatial structure of the SI memory representations was robust, it was absent from the participants' explicit descriptions, which focused on non-spatial strategies. Participants reported selecting items based, most frequently, on semantic categories and visual features. Taken together, these results demonstrated that participants had access to the metacognitive knowledge on the spatial structure of VWM representations, knowledge they manipulated to construct memory representations that enhanced or disrupted memory performance. While having a profound impact on behavior, this metacognitive knowledge on spatial structure remained implicit, as it was absent from the participants' verbal reports. Viewed from a larger perspective, this study explores how individuals interact with the world by actively structuring their surroundings to maximize cognitive performance.

Spatial organization to facilitate action

Humans exert a great deal of control over our local environments-selecting and arranging the many objects around us on the basis of conflicting task-demands, aesthetic preferences, and habitual convenience. Because routine behaviour necessitates that we regularly find and access these objects, the particular arrangements we choose can influence the likelihood and difficulty of engaging in different tasks and actions. Despite this importance, relatively little research has directly examined human organizational behaviours and tendencies. Here we investigate how objects in a computer-based search task are freely and dynamically arranged by participants over time, while manipulating the statistics of the target sequence. We report common organizational behaviours including reduction of distance between targets as well as separation of target subsets with high community. However, the extent of these behaviours and their relationship to individual differences in performance varies as a function of the target sequence structure. In particular, tasks composed of a larger number of smaller groups of targets lead to better organizational and performance outcomes than tasks composed of fewer larger groups.