Mental representation in visual/haptic crossmodal memory: evidence from interference effects

Abstract

Two experiments used visual-, verbal-, and haptic-interference tasks during encoding (Experiment 1) and retrieval (Experiment 2) to examine mental representation of familiar and unfamiliar objects in visual/haptic crossmodal memory. Three competing theories are discussed, which variously suggest that these representations are: (a) visual; (b) dual-code-visual for unfamiliar objects but visual and verbal for familiar objects; or (c) amodal. The results suggest that representations of unfamiliar objects are primarily visual but that crossmodal memory for familiar objects may rely on a network of different representations. The pattern of verbal-interference effects suggests that verbal strategies facilitate encoding of unfamiliar objects regardless of modality, but only haptic recognition regardless of familiarity. The results raise further research questions about all three theoretical approaches.

Repetition priming and the haptic recognition of familiar and unfamiliar objects

“…New objects presented in the second block were not named faster than objects presented in the first block, and they were named slower than primed objects in the second block. Third, this priming was invariant with respect to orientation: There was Lacey and Campbell (2006) argued that different representational codes-including a verbal code-could underpin cross-modal priming between vision and haptics. Thus, the priming of naming found by Reales and Ballesteros cannot be assumed to be purely presemantic.…”

“…Lacey and Campbell (2006) found that cross-modal recognition of familiar objects was unaffected by visual, verbal, or haptic interference either at study or at test. Since no one method of interference selectively influenced performance to a greater degree than any other, they suggested that object representations can be both formed and retrieved using a multitude of codes.…”

Persistent perceptual grouping effects in the evaluation of simple arithmetic expressions

“…Johnson, Paivio, and Clark (1989) suggested that representations initiated in one modality can activate verbal representations if the object is identified as familiar. Representations of unfamiliar objects may also be subject to verbal recoding if a verbal description can be generated (Lacey & Campbell, 2006). Furthermore, verbal recoding appears to disrupt the formation of mental images that support spatial reasoning (Brandimonte, Hitch, & Bishop, 1992).…”

Skin and Touch

“…Moreover, it still remains unclear as to the nature of the material that is actually stored. That is, researchers are unsure of whether tactile memories derive from multisensory information processing, vs being purely unisensory (Lacey and Campbell, 2006).…”