Amnemonic Recall Based on 'Fast Movement' Categorisation Does Not Explain the Animacy Effect

Animate entities are better remembered than matched inanimate entities. The ultimate mechanism underlying the ‘animacy effect’ is evidently adaptative and foundational. However, the proximate explanation remains unclear. In this study we explored ‘fast-movement’ categorization as a potential proximate cause driving this effect. This study was largely based on the pioneering research by Nairne et al., (2013) and hence it adapted a similar paradigm of three trials involving presentation of words, followed by a distractor task and finally a recall task. The words were matched not only on the basis of linguistic features, but also on the basis of ‘fast-movement’ ratings. However, the results still showed a robust animacy effect. Thus, we concluded that the memory advantage of animate items over inanimate items cannot be explained by differential motion categorisations.