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Aesthetic experience enhances first-person spatial representation.
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Description: Episodic autobiographical memories are characterized by a spatial context and an affective component. But how do affective and spatial aspects interact? We investigated how one element of affect, aesthetic liking, modulates memory for location, in three experiments. Participants visited an exhibition of contemporary art. They then relocated previously-viewed artworks on the museum map, and reported how much they liked them. Liking an artwork was associated with increased ability to recall the wall on which it was hung. This effect was independent of memory for the room where the artwork was located. The effect was not explained by viewing time and appeared to be established at encoding. The link between wall memory and liking remained when participants attended to abstractness, rather than liking, and when testing occurred 24 hours after the museum visit. Recalling the wall requires recalling facing direction, so our findings suggest positive aesthetic experiences enhance first-person spatial representations.