Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 24, 2025
05:15
The Spatial Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
10.8K
Spatial-positional associations in short-term memory can vanish in long-term memory.
Morgane Ftaïta1, Alessandro Guida2, Michaël Fartoukh1
1BCL, CNRS, Université Côte d'Azur, Nice, France.
Memory & Cognition
|June 12, 2024
Summary
Spatialization in working memory, known as the SPoARC effect, may not be permanent. This study found that spatial-positional associations vanish as sequences are repeatedly presented and chunked.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Human Memory
Background:
- The SPoARC effect demonstrates that serial information is spatially processed in working memory.
- The durability of these spatial-positional associations remains an open question.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if spatialization persists when sequences are repeatedly presented and potentially chunked.
- To explore whether chunking leads to unified spatial representations and the vanishing of spatialization.
Main Methods:
- A spatialization task inspired by the Hebb repetition paradigm was used.
- Thirty-seven participants performed a task involving repeated sequences of four stimuli.
- Participants judged if a probe stimulus belonged to the presented sequence using lateralized response keys.
Main Results:
- On average, no significant spatialization was observed for repetitive sequences.
- The spatialization effect was detectable early in the task but diminished with repetition.
- Increased sequence repetition correlated with reduced left-to-right spatialization.
Conclusions:
- Spatial-positional associations in working memory can diminish for repeated sequences.
- Working memory may reduce spatialization efforts once a sequence is chunked into long-term memory.
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