Working Memory for Serial Order and Numerical Cognition

Majerus, Steve; Attout, Lucie

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-811529-9.00019-4

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 90 publications

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“…Item and order information seem to be coded and represented separately (for reviews, see Refs. 23, 24, and 71). Consequentially, various theories have assumed that item information and order information were coded separately, although, up to now, it remains unclear how exactly order is coded in memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Spatialization in working memory: can individuals reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts?

Guida

Mosinski

Cipora

et al. 2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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A recent study based on the SPoARC effect (spatial position association response codes) showed that culture heavily shapes cognition and more specifically the way thought is organized; when Western adults are asked to keep in mind a sequence of colors, they mentally organize them from left to right, whereas right-to-left reading/writing adults spatialize them in the opposite direction. Here, we investigate if the spontaneous direction of spatialization in Westerners can be reversed. Lists of five consonants were presented auditorily at a rate of 3 s per item, participants were asked to mentally organize the memoranda from right to left. Each list was followed by a probe. Participants had to indicate whether the probe was part of the sequence by pressing a "yes" key or a "no" key with the left or right index finger. Left/right-hand key assignment was switched after half of the trials were completed. The results showed a reverse SPoARC effect that was comparable in magnitude to the spontaneous left-to-right SPoARC effect found in a previous study. Overall, our results suggest that individuals can reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Spatialization in working memory: can individuals reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts?

Guida

Mosinski

Cipora

et al. 2020

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

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show abstract

“…6 This idea of a slotted mental line fits well with recent computational models of WM and how they account for order coding. Since the seventies, results (e.g., Bjork & Healy, 1974;Dale, 1987;Engelkamp & Dehn, 2000;Henson, Hartley, Burgess, Hitch, & Flude, 2003;Majerus, Poncelet, Elsen, & van der Linden, 2006;Mulligan, 1999;Sperling & Melchner, 1976) have shown that WM models should account for two distinct kinds of information: memory for the content and memory for the order, which seem to be coded and represented separately (for a review, see Hurlstone, Hitch, & Baddeley, 2014;Majerus & Attout, 2018;Marshuetz, 2005).…”

Section: Slotted Schemas: the Spoarc Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining the SPoARC and SNARC effects with knowledge structures: An expertise account

Guida¹,

Campitelli

2019

Psychon Bull Rev

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Two proposals have been put forward to account conjointly for the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect and the spatial-positional association of response codes (SPoARC) effect: the working memory account and the dual account. Here, on the basis of experimental and theoretical knowledge acquired in the field of expert memory, we propose an alternative accountnamed the expertise account-that explains both effects through the acquisition and use of knowledge structures (a generalization of Bchunks,^Bretrieval structures,^and Btemplates^), which have been used extensively in expert memory theory. These knowledge structures can be of two types: nonslotted or slotted schemas. We suggest that the SNARC effect can be explained via the use of nonslotted schemas, and the SPoARC effect via slotted schemas. We conclude our article by presenting the broader implications of our framework for working memory in general, when considering knowledge structures.

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“…Besides having a robust empirical foundation in the ordinal position effect, the MWH is broadly compatible with existent theoretical insight across various levels, including its link to the powerful framework of neural reuse (Anderson, 2010(Anderson, , 2014; its potential substantiation of the notion of position markers that is core to many computational models on serial order WM; its smooth assimilation in dominant, attention-based perspectives on WM (Cowan, 1998;Oberauer, 2009); and its compatibility with specific hallmarks of serial order WM such as domain-general serial order coding that is representationally distinct from the item level (Hurlstone, Hitch, & Baddeley, 2014;Majerus & Attout, 2018). Hence, there is all reason to explore the behavior of the ordinal position effect under different manipulations in order to falsify, confirm, and/or further specify the MWH´s core premise that spatial cognition supports serial order working memory.…”

mentioning

confidence: 74%

The empirical reach of the ´mental whiteboard´: A commentary on Ginsburg et al. (2017)

Abrahamse¹,

Guida²

2018

Preprint

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In a recent study, Ginsburg and colleagues (2017) explored the boundary conditions of the ordinal position effect, which refers to the horizontal format with which (non-spatial) item sequences have been observed to be represented in working memory. On the basis of 6 experiments on the ordinal position effect, they conclude that serial order in working memory is spatial by nature only if the memoranda are processed semantically. In this commentary we explain why we feel that Ginsburg et al.’s (2017) conclusions are premature, and how they inspire specific guidelines for a more optimal study of ´spatialization´ for serial order in working memory.

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Working Memory for Serial Order and Numerical Cognition

Cited by 8 publications

References 90 publications

Spatialization in working memory: can individuals reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts?

Spatialization in working memory: can individuals reverse the cultural direction of their thoughts?

Explaining the SPoARC and SNARC effects with knowledge structures: An expertise account

The empirical reach of the ´mental whiteboard´: A commentary on Ginsburg et al. (2017)

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