Interference in immediate spatial memory

Abstract

It has been suggested that maintenance in visuospatial immediate memory involves implicit motor processes that are analogous to the articulatory loop in verbal memory. An alternative account, which is explored here, is that maintenance is based on shifts of spatial attention. In four experiments, subjects recalled spatial memory span items after an interval, and in a fifth experiment, digit span was recalled after an interval. The tasks carried out during the interval included touching visual targets, repeating heard words, listening to tones from spatially separated locations, pointing to these tones, pointing to visual targets, and categorizing spatial targets as being from the left or right. Spatial span recall was impaired if subjects saw visual targets or heard tones, and this impairment was increased if either a motor response or a categorical response was made. Repeating words heard in different spatial locations did not impair recall, but reading visually presented words did interfere. For digit span only, the tasks involving a verbal response impaired recall. The results are interpreted within a framework in which active spatial attention is involved in maintaining spatial items in order in memory, and is interfered with by any task (visual, auditory, perceptual, motor) that also makes demands on spatial attention.

Exploring the suffix effect in serial visuospatial short-term memory

“…Evidence indicates that the abrupt onset of visual information mobilizes attention (Remington, Johnston, & Yantis, 1992;Yantis & Jonides, 1984). Evidence also suggests that serial visuospatial short-term memory is disrupted by tasks involving spatial judgments or automatic shifts of spatial attention (Smyth & Scholey, 1994) independently of eye movements (Smyth, 1996). Interestingly, it has also been suggested that the involvement of focal attention can explain the suffix effect observed with visually presented verbal stimuli (Hitch, 1975).…”

Age differences in visuospatial working memory.

“…The task requires the participant to remember the particular blocks that were tapped on a given trial by the test administrator as well as the order in which they were tapped. Apart from memory for sequential order, the CBT is believed to involve a number of other components important to VSWM: encoding of visual stimuli, maintenance of that information, memory of spatial locations, inhibition of recall of irrelevant information (thus maintenance of attention on the task), and selection of response at retrieval (Bruyer & Scailquin, 1999;Fischer, 2001;Hanley, Young, & Pearson, 1991;Smyth & Scholey, 1994), all factors assessed across multiple trials on the same board. Of course, many of these features (such as its conventional ascending format, recall across multiple trials, and visual similarity of stimuli across all trials) also provide an ideal setting for the build up of PI.…”

“…To assess VSWM, we used the classic nine-location Corsi block task (CBT; Corsi, 1972) in the first study because it is widely used to assess visuospatial memory in both clinical (e.g., Joyce & Robbins, 1991;Vilkki & Holst, 1989) and nonclinical (e.g., Jones, Farrand, Stuart, & Morris, 1995;Smyth & Scholey, 1994) populations. Although the CBT is often considered a short-term memory (STM) task, Miyake, Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty (2001) reported that those factors believed to differentiate verbal WM and STM tasks, such as executive functioning and controlled attention, are as strongly involved in visuospatial STM tasks as in conventional VSWM tasks, and the CBT is now considered to be an excellent measure of VSWM (see also, Berch, Krikorian, & Huha, 1998;Kessels, Kappelle, de Haan, & Postma, 2002;Vecchi & Richardson, 2001).…”

Working-memory and auditory localization: Demand for central resources impairs performance

“…When considering the spatial characteristics of the VSSP, only a handful of studies on the working-memory model have used an auditory-based task (e.g., Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980;Smyth & Scholey, 1994). For instance, in an attempt to determine whether spatial or visual coding is used by the VSSP, Baddeley and Lieberman studied the effects of both a visual and a spatial task on performance of Brooks matrix, which is an imagery task thought to rely on visuo-spatial working-memory resources (Brooks, 1967(Brooks, , 1968; but see Salway & Logie, 1995).…”