Memory of Objects, Labels, and Other Sensory Impressions From a Museum Visit

IntroductionThis study attempted to assess recall for three differenttypes of exhibit events: visual (exhibit objects), semantic(label content), and other sensory impressions (sounds, tem-perature, darkness, touch). These three categories wereselected because a pilot study suggested that visitor memo-ries of exhibits appeared to fall primarily into these areas.Visitor studies research has focused almost exclusively onsemantic knowledge (e.g., label information), frequentlyneglecting other types of knowledge. A comparison ofrecollections for the three types of knowledge across exhibitareas is the maj or purpose of this study. Included in the studywere ratings of vividness of recollections.MethodParticipants were 81 undergraduate students enrolled inpsychology classes at Jacksonville State University. Theywere instructed to visit the Anniston Museum of NaturalHistory over a weekend and to study each of the exhibit areascarefully, document the time spent in each exhibit area bywriting the total minutes for each area on a museum map, andturn in the map (with times) in the first class after theweekend. They were not told that they would be specificallytested for recollections of exhibits.When participants returned to class on Monday, theywere given a five-page survey asking them to recall for eachexhibit area: (1) the names of objects; (2) label content; (3)other sensory experiences recalled (sound, temperature, etc);and (4) any other memories. In addition, respondents weretold to rate how vivid each recollection was (on a scale from1, lowest to 7, highest). Finally, the exhibit areas were ratedon a number of descriptors (e.g., degree of excitement, howmemorable, overall rating). Only the recall data will bereported in this article.The major exhibit areas in the museum were:(1) Dynamic Earth (including a walk-through simulatedlimestone cave, a replica of a Pteronadon, a mold of aprehistoric fish fossil, and a model of a skull from a terapter-coris). (2) Attack and Defense (North American animals portrayingpredator-prey relationships). (3)Bird Hall (a collection of small glass-enclosed dioramasof mounted birds). (4)African Plains (open dioramas of African animals). (5) Egyptian Mummy (two mummies contained in theirdecorated cases, x-rays of the skeletal remains of the mum-mies, and a reconstructed bronze bust of one of the mummi-fied individuals). Results and DiscussionThe average number of memories per individual for eachexhibit area are shown in Table 1.Table 1Average RecollectionsArea Objects Label SensoryDynamic Earth 2.86 0.84 1.96Attack & Defense 4.89 1.53 1.06Bird Hall 2.93 0.88 1.23African Plains 4.11 0.77 1.17Egyptian Mummy 1.89 1.26 0.53Results of Table 1 clearly show that, of these threecategories, objects are most likely to be recalled. For threeof the five areas, label content was least likely to be recalled.In addition, Dynamic Earth generated the most sensoryrecollections.Exhibits differed in terms of their ability to stimulate thethree categories of recollection. Recollections for eachcategory are described below.Objects. The rate of recollection was not perfectlycorrelated with the number of objects in an area. The Attack& Defense area produced the largest number of recollectionsof exhibit objects although it had far fewer objects than theAfrican Plains which was second in average number ofobjects recalled. Egyptian Mummy generated the lowestnumber of recalls which is consistent with the fact that it is thesmallest space and contains the fewest number of objects.The specific objects recalled tended to be of large size (e.g.,elephant, giraffe, bear, pteronadon), or distinctive in someother way (e.g., snakes, live bee hive, interactive exhibits,waterfall in cave). Sensory Impressions. The walk-through, simulated caveof Dynamic Earth created a larger average number of sensorymemories (feel of cold temperature, darkness of cave, soundof water flowing over rock formations) than the other exhibitareas which had fewer multi-sensory experiences. DynamicEarth generated the hightest number of memories for sound(65.4%), temperature (61.7%), and (dark) lighting (16.0%). The Bird Hall, which plays recorded bird songs through thearea, generated the next highest number of sound memories(60.5%). Memories of touch were highest for African Plainsin which a number of hands-on figures and skulls wereavailable, the Bird Hall which contained two interactiveexhibits, and Dynamic Earth in which one could touch thecave formations and water.Label content. With few exceptions, recollections oflabel content tended to be quite idiosyncratic.Only two la-bels in the Attack & Defense area generated more than 10percent recall: Snake (25.9%) and Bear (24.7%). In theEgyptian Mummy area, the most frequent label content re-called was with respect to the gender of the mummies (21 %),although the recollection of gender was often inaccurate.