Order information in verbal working memory shifts the subjective midpoint in both the line bisection and the landmark tasks

A largely substantiated view in the domain of working memory is that the maintenance of serial order is achieved by generating associations of each item with an independent representation of its position, so-called position markers. Recent studies reported that the ordinal position of an item in ver...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) 2017-10, Vol.70 (10), p.1973-1983
Main Authors: Antoine, Sophie, Ranzini, Mariagrazia, Gebuis, Titia, van Dijck, Jean-Philippe, Gevers, Wim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Association
Attention - physiology
Bisection tasks
Female
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Ordinal information processing
Space Perception - physiology
Spatial attention
Spatial Processing - physiology
Verbal Learning - physiology
Working memory
Young Adult
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Summary:A largely substantiated view in the domain of working memory is that the maintenance of serial order is achieved by generating associations of each item with an independent representation of its position, so-called position markers. Recent studies reported that the ordinal position of an item in verbal working memory interacts with spatial processing. This suggests that position markers might be spatial in nature. However, these interactions were so far observed in tasks implying a clear binary categorization of space (i.e., with left and right responses or targets). Such binary categorizations leave room for alternative interpretations, such as congruency between non-spatial categorical codes for ordinal position (e.g., begin and end) and spatial categorical codes for response (e.g., left and right). Here we discard this interpretation by providing evidence that this interaction can also be observed in a task that draws upon a continuous processing of space, the line bisection task. Specifically, bisections are modulated by ordinal position in verbal working memory, with lines bisected more towards the right after retrieving items from the end compared to the beginning of the memorized sequence. This supports the idea that position markers are intrinsically spatial in nature.
ISSN:1747-0218
1747-0226
DOI:10.1080/17470218.2016.1217246