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Previous evidence shows that words with implicit spatial meaning or metaphorical spatial associations are perceptually simulated and can guide attention to associated locations (e.g., bird—upward location). In turn, simulated representations interfere with visual perception at an associated location. The present study investigates the effect of spatial associations on short-term verbal recognition memory to disambiguate between modal and amodal accounts of spatial interference effects across two experiments. Participants in both experiments encoded words presented in congruent and incongruent locations. Congruent and incongruent locations were based on an independent norming task. In Experiment 1, an auditorily presented word probed participants’ memory as they were visually cued to either the original location of the probe word or a diagonal location at retrieval. In Experiment 2, there was no cue at retrieval but a neutral encoding condition in which words normed to central locations were shown. Results show that spatial associations affected memory performance although spatial information was neither relevant nor necessary for successful retrieval: Words in Experiment 1 were retrieved more accurately when there was a visual cue in the congruent location at retrieval but only if they were encoded in a non-canonical position. A visual cue in the congruent location slowed down memory performance when retrieving highly imageable words. With no cue at retrieval (Experiment 2), participants were better at remembering spatially congruent words as opposed to neutral words. Results provide evidence in support of sensorimotor simulation in verbal memory and a perceptual competition account of spatial interference effect.

Linguistic synesthesia (or synesthetic/intrafield/crossmodal metaphor) refers to crossmodal instances in which expressions in different sensory modalities are combined as in the case of sweet (tast...

People revisit spatial locations of visually encoded information when they are asked to retrieve that information, even when the visual image is no longer present. Such "looking at nothing" during retrieval is likely modulated by memory load (i.e., mental effort to maintain and reconstruct information) and the strength of mental representations. We investigated whether words that are more difficult to remember also lead to more looks to relevant, blank locations. Participants were presented four nouns on a two by two grid. A number of lexico-semantic variables were controlled to form high-difficulty and low-difficulty noun sets. Results reveal more frequent looks to blank locations during retrieval of high-difficulty nouns compared to low-difficulty ones. Mixed-effects modelling demonstrates that imagery-related semantic factors (imageability and concreteness) predict looking at nothing during retrieval. Results provide the first direct evidence that looking at nothing is modulated by word difficulty and in particular, word imageability. Overall, the research provides substantial support to the integrated memory account for linguistic stimuli and looking at nothing as a form of mental imagery.