Effects of spatial configurations on the resolution of spatial working memory

Mutluturk, Aysu; Boduroglu, Aysecan · 2014 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-014-0713-4

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Summary

This study investigates how spatial configurations influence the resolution of individual location representations in spatial working memory (WM). While prior research established that people represent spatial information configurally, it remained unclear whether these global representations facilitate the precision of individual object locations or if they are merely a byproduct of memory. The authors specifically tested whether preserving spatial configurations at retrieval improves the fidelity of recalling specific object positions compared to when those configurations are disrupted or absent. The researchers conducted three experiments using an open-ended spatial recall task. Participants studied sets of three or five colored squares presented for 500 ms. After a brief delay, they received an auditory cue identifying a target color and were asked to place that object back in its original position using a mouse. The key manipulation occurred in the probe display: in the "same-configuration" condition, non-target objects remained in their original positions; in the "different-configuration" condition, non-targets moved to new random positions; and in Experiment 1, a "no-configuration" condition presented no non-targets. Experiment 2 replaced the no-configuration condition with a "color-swap" condition, where non-targets kept their positions but changed colors, to isolate configural effects from general change detection. Spatial resolution was measured by the Euclidean distance between the reported and original target locations. The results consistently demonstrated that preserving spatial configurations significantly enhanced the precision of location memory. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited significantly lower error rates in the same-configuration condition compared to both the different- and no-configuration conditions. Reaction times were also longest when configural cues were absent, suggesting greater cognitive effort. Experiment 2 revealed that while changing non-target colors (color-swap) increased error slightly compared to the same-configuration condition, the error was significantly lower than in the different-configuration condition. This indicates that global configural structure provides a distinct benefit beyond relative location cues. Across all experiments, increasing the set size from three to five items reduced resolution, but the facilitative effect of preserved configurations remained robust. These findings imply that spatial working memory relies on a combination of absolute positional codes and global configural representations. The preservation of the overall spatial layout at retrieval acts as a scaffold that improves the resolution of individual item locations. The study concludes that configural representations are not merely obligatory or effortless byproducts but are actively utilized to compute precise locations, supporting a model where ensemble representations and individual object codes interact to support spatial memory performance.

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• working memory