The Role of Distinct Components of Visuo-spatial Working Memory in the Processing of Texts

Abstract

Three experiments examined whether visuo-spatial working memory is involved in processing spatial descriptions and tested whether different processes within the visuo-spatial working memory are involved in processing different kinds of descriptions. Experiment 1 considered the performance of two groups with low and high visuo-spatial working memory abilities in memorising the description of a city. The high visuo-spatial working memory group had a better memory performance than the low visuo-spatial working memory group. In Experiment 2, the Brooks' (1967) task was adapted to investigate the selective interference of four different concurrent tasks (a verbal, a visual, a spatial-sequential, and a spatial-simultaneous task) on the recall of short abstract, visual and spatial texts. In Experiment 3, the same distinction was extended to longer and natural descriptions of different environments. Participants listened to three descriptions: a description that mainly stressed the visual properties of an environment, a description from a route perspective, and a description from a survey perspective. They also performed the concurrent visual and the two concurrent spatial tasks proposed in Experiment 2. Results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that tasks involving different cognitive resources (i.e. the verbal, visual, spatial-simultaneous, and the spatial-sequential tasks) had a differential interference with the free recall of different kinds of descriptions.