Previous research suggests that individuals tend to form spatial habits (i.e., placing objects in consistent locations inspace) when interacting with objects in the environment (Zhu & Risko, in press). However, it remains unclear how such spatialhabits develop over time. One hypothesis suggests that spatial habit formation may involve a process of stabilization wherebyindividuals’ spatial behaviour becomes progressively fixed over time. We examined this hypothesis by tracking students’ seatingbehaviour in a classroom over the course of 12 weeks. Although individuals’ overall seating choice tended to cluster near wherethey initially sat, we did not find evidence that seating behaviour stabilized over time. However, a significant curvilinear relationwas found between seating choice and time such that seating choice near the beginning and end of the 12-week period weremore varied than those in the middle. Implications of this study for understanding spatial habit formation will be discussed.

We often organize items in space according to their semantic and/or functional properties (e.g., cookware in the kitchen, clothing in the closet), yet little research has been conducted on the memorial effects of these types of spatial configurations. Across three experiments, we examined how a semantically homogenous display influenced memory for item locations compared to a heterogenous/scrambled display. Participants learned the locations of words in a semantically homogenous display (where all words belonged to a single category), as well as a scrambled display (where the words belonged to an assortment of different categories). While the semantic display improved recall memory for the words themselves (i.e., item memory), it resulted in a cost to item location memory. We hypothesize that semantic structuring can impair memory for item locations by increasing similarity and hence confusability between items from the same category.

We often organize objects around both visual and semantic boundaries in space. Across four experiments, we examined how semantically consistent partitions influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category), as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a random assortment of objects from different categories). While semantic partitions significantly improved location memory over the purely visually partitioned display, this advantage was significantly reduced when participants were cued to the correct partition during recall. Our results suggest that semantic category information benefits memory via strengthening the association between a given category and a spatial region delineated by a partition. Further, there was some indication that this benefit may come with the drawback of reducing memory precision for objects within a partitioned space.

A widely-accepted notion is that organization can improve task performance and generally allow us to better functionwithin a given task environment (Kirsh, 1995; 1996). However, it remains unclear the extent to which individuals believe thatorganization will help to improve task performance when they are asked to carry out mundane tasks in the real world. Toexamine this, individuals were asked to search through a pile of Lego building blocks for specific pieces. Prior to the searchtask, they were asked their preferred strategy for this task (e.g., organizing vs. not organizing the Lego pile prior to search) andto estimate how much time and effort each strategy would take for task completion. While both strategies were comparable interms of objective task completion time and subjective time and effort estimations, participants were overwhelmingly biasedagainst choosing the organization strategy. Implications for the current study will be discussed.