A visuospatial "phonological loop" in working memory: evidence from American Sign Language

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Working memory is crucial for cognitive tasks.
• The phonological loop supports verbal information maintenance.
• The visuospatial sketchpad handles visual and spatial information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if working memory supports an articulatory rehearsal loop in the visuospatial domain.
• To examine the coding strategies used by deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users in immediate serial recall.
• To determine the interaction between manual motoric and phonological coding in visuospatial working memory.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments involving immediate serial recall were conducted with deaf subjects fluent in ASL.
• Experiment 1 used ASL stimuli, while Experiment 2 used namable pictures.
• Articulatory suppression was employed to disrupt rehearsal processes.

Main Results:

• Evidence for manual motoric coding and ASL-based phonological coding was found in Experiment 1.
• These two coding effects did not interact, indicating separate contributions.
• In Experiment 2, articulatory suppression eliminated the phonological similarity effect for picture stimuli.

Conclusions:

• Working memory can develop a language-based rehearsal loop in the visuospatial modality, similar to the phonological loop for speech.
• An articulatory process is involved in translating visual (picture) stimuli into a phonological code for memory.
• These findings highlight the flexibility and adaptability of working memory systems across different modalities and languages.