Abstract
Naveh-Benjamin (1987, 1988) has shown that memory for spatial location does not meet the criteria for automatic encoding as claimed by Hasher and Zacks(1979). Age, intention, concurrent processing demands, practice, strategies, and individual differences affected memory for location. These variables should have affected effortful but not automatic processing. The experiments reported in the present paper, in which a different task was used, showed that intention, practice, and concurrent processing demands did not affect memory for location. I concluded that (1) the location task used by Naveh-Benjamin included effortful subtasks and also incidental, cover or concurrent processing tasks that interfered directly with performance, and (2) the variables that he manipulated may not have affected the encoding of location. The need to differentiate processes from task performance in analyzing the automaticity issue is discussed. The dominant mode for remembering location is automatic, but such information may also be remembered voluntarily.
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This research was supported by Grant HD 125558 to Norman R. Ellis from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I amgrateful to Eileen Katz for her participation in conducting Experiments 1 and 2. I wish to thank Susan Ricketts, Cindy Dulaney, Barbara Johnson, Cindy Johnson, and Chris Wright for assistance in data collection.
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Ellis, N.R. Is memory for spatial location automatically encoded?. Memory & Cognition 18, 584–592 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197101
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197101