When do spatial and visual working memory interact?

Justin N. Wood
2010 Attention, Perception & Psychophysics  
This study examined how spatial working memory and visual (object) working memory interact, focusing on two related questions: First, can these systems function independently from one another? Second, under what conditions do they operate together? In a dual-task paradigm, participants attempted to remember locations in a spatial working memory task and colored objects in a visual working memory task. Memory for the locations and objects was subject to independent working memory storage limits,
more » ... which indicates that spatial and visual working memory can function independently from one another. However, additional experiments revealed that spatial working memory and visual working memory interact in three memory contexts: when retaining (1) shapes, (2) integrated color-shape objects, and (3) colored objects at specific locations. These results suggest that spatial working memory is needed to bind colors and shapes into integrated object representations in visual working memory. Further, this study reveals a set of conditions in which spatial and visual working memory can be isolated from one another. Keywords Spatial working memory . Visual working memory . Memory binding . Feature integration . Short-term memory How do people retain visual representations of the environment? Previous studies provide evidence that working memory can be divided into separate systems for retaining location information and object information (i.e., colors, shapes). These systems are commonly referred to as 'spatial working memory' (SWM) and 'visual working memory' (VWM), respectively; there is also evidence for specialized working memory systems for retaining verbal information (Baddeley, 1986) and spatiotemporal information (i.e., observed movement information; Wood, 2007, in press). Evidence for the dissociation between SWM and VWM comes from three main findings. First, brain damage can impair object memory or spatial memory without impairing the other type of memory (e.g.
doi:10.3758/s13414-010-0048-8 pmid:21264717 fatcat:psaygewacrfcpaexfz65xeqn24