title: Short report: the effect of expertise in hiking on recognition memory for mountain scenes.
abstract: The nature of an expert memory advantage that does not depend on stimulus structure or chunking was examined, using more ecologically valid stimuli in the context of a more natural activity than previously studied domains. Do expert hikers and novice hikers see and remember mountain scenes differently? In the present experiment, 18 novice hikers and 17 expert hikers were presented with 60 photographs of scenes from hiking trails. These scenes differed in the degree of functional aspects that implied some action possibilities or dangers. The recognition test revealed that the memory performance of experts was significantly superior to that of novices for scenes with highly functional aspects. The memory performance for the scenes with few functional aspects did not differ between novices and experts. These results suggest that experts pay more attention to, and thus remember better, scenes with functional meanings than do novices.
authors.affiliation: School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, 1-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan. satoru@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Satoru
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kawamura
authors.forename: Sae
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.forename: Kazunori
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Morikawa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D009051:Mountaineering / Q000523:psychology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D012307:Risk Factors; D014796:Visual Perception