Abstract
The integration of elaborative, pictorial and motoric information during drawing is thought to facilitate memory retrieval. Although previous studies have argued that motor information is important for retrieval, this has not been effectively addressed in isolation. To fill this gap in our understanding, we conducted two experiments where participants drew a list of words using a robotic manipulandum. After either a 10-min break (E1) or a 24-48-hr break (E2) participants completed a recognition test while being passively moved by the robot. The movements were either congruent (reinstatement) or incongruent (interference) with one’s drawing of the currently tested word. Experiment 1 results revealed that the fastest response times and a higher hit rate were seen with motor reinstatement. Furthermore, analyses of prediction scores for each image from a neural network (VGG16), indicated that better drawings predicted remembering, regardless of condition. Consistent with findings from Experiment 1, Experiment 2 revealed the fastest response times occurred following reinstatement. However, contrary to Experiment 1, Experiment 2 saw the emergence of a possible detriment to memory accuracy associated with reinstatement. Also, better drawings in motor reinstatement, but not interference, now predicted worse memory retrieval. Together, these experiments demonstrate that motor reinstatement consistently improves the speed of memory retrieval even with a longer delay before retrieval. However, reinstatement of accurate drawing paths was detrimental to accuracy after a delay. These findings suggest that motor representations of the encoded drawing may drift over time, rendering the reinstatement of the actual drawings incongruent with one’s memory.
