More critically, comparison among four experiments on the reciprocal interference effects, as measured by the dual-task costs, demonstrates no significant contribution from additional processing other than the shared processes. A further load increase on either process produced reciprocal increases in interference on both processes, indicating that attention and VWM share common resources. With sufficiently large loads on attention and VWM, considerable interference between the two processes was observed. We examined whether both attention and VWM share the same processing resources using a novel dual-task costs approach based on a load-varying dual-task technique. 2 Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CanadaĪttention and visuospatial working memory (VWM) share very similar characteristics both have the same upper bound of about four items in capacity and they recruit overlapping brain regions.1 Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Toronto, ON, Canada. These findings also address how task-irrelevant spatial information influences working memory in the first place.Jing Feng 1*, Jay Pratt 2 and Ian Spence 2 In other words, it appears that spatial information (ostensibly invoking the ‘visuospatial sketchpad’) benefits working memory, even when observers explicitly use a rehearsal strategy - suggesting a prioritization of spatial information. We replicate this general pattern across several experiments, and further show that these findings (a) should be understood as a space-advantage rather than a color-decrement, and (b) this benefit occurs because of the consistency for location within object (rather than the lack of overlap between objects). Despite this (and frequent participant reports of a rehearsal strategy), we observed a robust memory advantage in the space-structured condition. This task therefore had two key components: (1) both color and location information were task-irrelevant (2) the to-be-remembered information (shape names) could be rehearsed. On some trials, space was structured so that any shape appearing multiple times appeared in the same location and no other shape appeared in that location (whilst color was randomized) on other trials, color was structured (whilst location was randomized). They were explicitly told that they had to recall only (a) the shapes that they saw and (b) the order they saw them in - not color or location. Observers were introduced to a novel working memory task in which they saw a series of 5-7 shapes that appeared (a) in one of four colors and (b) in one of four locations (quadrants). But how do these two seemingly distinct systems interact? Here, we ask whether (and how) task-irrelevant spatial structure influences working memory. Studies of visual working memory often deliberately ignore the phonological loop, using stimuli that cannot be easily verbally encoded (e.g., oriented lines). Working memory is commonly understood as consisting of two distinct sub-systems: a ‘visuospatial sketchpad’ and a ‘phonological loop’.
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