Regular or Distinctive Spatial Organization of Visual Objects: Which Improves Memory?

How might varying spatial organization improve memory for sets of objects? In this experiment simple line drawings of everyday objects were placed in grids that were regularly or irregularly organized at either a local or a global level, to give 4 layouts of stimuli that varied in the distinctiveness of their spatial organization of objects. Nineteen university students took part in six successive sessions of drawing the stimuli. In the first session they copied (training) the stimuli and then reproduced them from memory (test). In the subsequent sessions at intervals of 24 hours they reproduced the stimuli from memory (test) and then again copied stimuli (further training). Performance measures were response times (pauses whilst drawing), number of objects and transitions between local areas of the stimulus grid. It was found that global regular organization best supported learning.