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Order Information in Verbal Working Memory Shifts the Subjective Midpoint in Both the Line Bisection and the Landmark Tasks

Authors :
Titia Gebuis
Sophie Antoine
Wim Gevers
Mariagrazia Ranzini
Jean-Philippe van Dijck
Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology
Amsterdam Neuroscience - Cellular & Molecular Mechanisms
Source :
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70 (10, Antoine, S, Ranzini, M, Gebuis, T, van Dijck, J P & Gevers, W 2017, ' Order information in verbal working memory shifts the subjective midpoint in both the line bisection and the landmark tasks ', The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 70, no. 10, pp. 1973-1983 . https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1217246, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(10), 1973-1983. Psychology Press Ltd
Publication Year :
2017
Publisher :
SAGE Publications, 2017.

Abstract

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.

Details

ISSN :
17470226 and 17470218
Volume :
70
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....ec8b47869d08f3af7c06b31c894aedb5
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1217246