People recall and recognize animate words better than inanimate words, perhaps because memory systems were shaped by evolution to prioritize memory for predators, people, and food sources. Attentional paradigms show an animacy advantage that suggests that the animacy advantage in memory stems from a prioritization of animate items when allocating attentional resources during encoding. According to the attentional prioritization hypothesis, the animacy effect should be even larger when attention is divided during encoding. Alternatively, the animacy effect could be due to more controlled processing during encoding, and so should be reduced when attention is divided during encoding. We tested the attentional prioritization hypothesis and the controlled processing hypothesis by manipulating attention during encoding in free recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) but failed to find interactions between word type and attentional load in either free recall or recognition, contrary to the predictions from both hypotheses. We then tested whether the semantic representations of animate and inanimate items differ in terms of number of semantic features, using existing recall data from an item-level megastudy by Lau, Goh, and Yap (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71 (10), 2207–2222, 2018). Animate items have more semantic features, which partially mediated the relationship between animacy status and recall.

人们比无生命的词更好地回忆和识别有生命的词，这可能是因为记忆系统是由进化形成的，优先考虑捕食者、人类和食物来源的记忆。注意范式显示了一种生命力优势，这表明记忆中的生命力优势源于在编码期间分配注意力资源时对有生命项的优先级排序。根据注意力优先化假设，在编码过程中注意力被划分时，动画效果应该更大。或者，动画效果可能是由于编码过程中更多的受控处理，因此在编码过程中注意力分散时应该减少。我们通过在自由回忆（实验 1）和识别（实验 2）的编码过程中操纵注意力来测试注意力优先化假设和受控加工假设，但在自由回忆或识别中未能发现词类型和注意力负荷之间的相互作用，与两种假设的预测。然后，我们使用来自 Lau、Goh 和 Yap 的项目级大型研究的现有召回数据，测试了有生命和无生命项目的语义表示在语义特征数量方面是否不同。实验心理学季刊，71（10），2207-2222，2018）。动画项目具有更多的语义特征，这在一定程度上调节了动画状态和回忆之间的关系。