Interference in immediate spatial memory

Smyth, Mary M.; Scholey, Keith A. · 1994 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03202756

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Summary

This paper investigates the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of information in immediate visuospatial memory, specifically testing whether maintenance relies on implicit motor processes (analogous to the articulatory loop in verbal memory) or on shifts of spatial attention. The authors critique previous dual-task studies for conflating motor execution with attentional demands and for using tasks that introduce memory loads or sequencing requirements. To isolate the maintenance process, the study employs interference tasks during the retention interval between stimulus presentation and recall, allowing for the separation of input modality (visual vs. auditory) and response type (none, manual, or verbal). The research comprises five experiments involving undergraduate participants. The primary task was a spatial span test (Corsi block task), where subjects recalled sequences of locations on a grid of nine squares. During the retention interval, subjects performed various interference tasks: touching visual targets, repeating heard words, listening to spatially separated tones, pointing to tones or visual targets, or categorizing targets as left or right. Experiment 1 compared unfilled intervals with intervals filled by touching visual targets or repeating auditory words. Experiment 2 manipulated input modality (visual vs. auditory) and response requirements (no response, pointing, or verbal categorization) to determine if interference was driven by spatial attention shifts or motor execution. Subsequent experiments further examined the effects of reading visually presented words and the impact of these tasks on digit span recall. The results demonstrated that spatial span recall was significantly impaired when subjects attended to visual targets or heard spatially separated tones during the retention interval. This impairment was exacerbated when subjects made motor responses (pointing/touching) or categorical verbal responses ("left"/"right") to these spatial stimuli. Crucially, merely hearing tones or seeing visual targets without responding still caused interference, indicating that the disruption stems from the allocation of spatial attention rather than motor execution alone. Repeating words heard in different spatial locations did not impair spatial recall, but reading visually presented words did. In contrast, digit span recall was impaired only by tasks involving verbal responses, not by spatial attention tasks. The findings support the hypothesis that maintenance of visuospatial sequences relies on active shifts of spatial attention rather than implicit motor processes. Interference occurs whenever a secondary task demands spatial attention, regardless of whether the input is visual or auditory or whether a motor response is required. This distinguishes spatial memory maintenance from verbal memory maintenance, which relies on articulatory rehearsal. The study concludes that visuospatial immediate memory is maintained by a system sensitive to spatial attentional loads, providing evidence against the motor-rehearsal analogy and supporting a spatial-attention framework for nonverbal immediate memory.

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• prospective memory interruptions