Graduate Program

Clinical Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2017

Thesis Director

Daniele Nardi

Abstract

The current study aimed to investigate the use of physical activity as a context cue for object location memory. Two studies are reported in which physical activity is used as a context for object location memory. Experiment 1 utilized a 1-list design, wherein 52 undergraduate students were asked to encode and recall 28 objects from a grid, while either walking or standing. It was expected that participants engaging in matching physical activities at encoding and recall would have significantly higher rates of recall for object locations when compared to participants in the non-matching physical activity conditions. Results did not support my hypothesis: there was no evidence of a context effect of physical activity on object location memory. Experiment 2 was conducted with a 2-list design. Overall, 38 undergraduate students were asked to encode and recall two grids containing 14 objects each, while either walking or standing. Experiment 2 did not find context effects of physical activity on object location memory either. However, there was a significant advantage for females in the task, and, in both experiments, a significant interference effect of physical activity on recall was found. The failure to find a significant context effect is discussed in terms of the outshining hypothesis.

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