Effect of semantic clustering on the memory of spatial locations.

Abstract

The effect of altering the labels attached to points was examined in three experiments. The first experiment measured the extent of clustering that occurs based on the labels alone. This experiment also established norms for the remainder of the study. In the second and third experiments, subjects were required to learn the locations of points. The points were labeled in such a way as to suggest certain spatial clusterings. It was shown that subjects cluster points with regard to the labels attached to the points and these clusters may be based solely on the labels attached to the points. Furthermore, an alteration of the learning sequence to induce an alternate clustering showed no noticeable effect.