Effects of Global and Local Processing on Visuospatial Working Memory

If you want to find something, you need to know what you are looking for and where it was last located. Successful visuospatial working memory (VSWM) requires that a stimulus identity be combined with information about its location. How identity and location information interact during binding presents an interesting question because of 1) asymmetries in cognitive demands required by location and identity processing and 2) the fact that the two types of information are processed in different neural streams. The current studies explore how global and local processing approaches impact binding in VSWM. Experiment 1 explores effects of global spatial organization. Experiment 2 induces local processing demands through memory updating. Results show better location memory with both global and local processing, but also suggest that the processing focus (global or local) affects the interaction of location and identity processing in VSWM.

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