Find (and Remember) the Odd One Out: The Effect of Categorical Distinctiveness on Recognition Memory

How does the relationship between the categorical membership of a target object and its surrounding context affect the memorization of the target object? We conducted four experiments to examine how categorical distinctiveness is related to memory. During the categorical discrimination stage, participants searched for a target to be remembered among five distractor images belonging to another category. In the low categorical distinctiveness condition, the target image was surrounded by perceptually similar images from the same superordinate category (e.g., a cat among dogs); in the high categorical distinctiveness condition, it was surrounded by dissimilar objects from another superordinate category (e.g., a cat among chairs). Participants also performed a recognition test. We expected an increase in the number of hits and false alarms in the recognition task for objects discriminated in the low categorical distinctiveness condition. This hypothesis was confirmed in Experiments 1 and 4, and the effect also partly remained in Experiments 2 and 3 (when we manipulated the memorization time), affecting only hits or only false alarms, respectively. Moreover, in Experiment 2, in which memorization was incidental, memorization among low-distinguishability objects was more accurate, which could indicate the advantages that categorical knowledge offers in such a memorization paradigm. This indicates the influence of categorical knowledge on the memorization and recognition of objects.