Hand Shape Affects Access to Memories

The present study examined the ways that body posture facilitated retrieval of autobiographical memories in more detail by focusing on two aspects of congruence in position of a specific body part: hand shape and hand orientation. Hand shape is important in the tactile perception and manipulation of objects. We manipulated two aspects of hand shape: orientation (vertical vs. horizontal) and aperture (grip vs. no-grip). We manipulated orientation and aperture to create memory-congruent and memory-incongruent hand shapes. For example, a horizontal-grip shape is congruent with pushing a shopping cart, but inconsistent with doing a karate chop. We predicted that memory-congruent hand shapes would produce faster access to autobiographical memories than memory-incongruent hand shapes.