Updating verbal and visuospatial working memory: Are the processes parallel?

Abstract

The current study compared the processes of updating verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) and examined the roles of central executive and slave systems in working memory updating tasks, by changing the number of items updated simultaneously to manipulate the load on central executive. Experiment 1 used the verbal WM updating task, and the results validated the efficiency of the paradigm to manipulate the load on central executive. Experiment 2 employed the verbal WM updating task, with the articulatory suppression task to interfere with the phonological loop. The results supported the study by Morris and Jones, revealing that the central executive system played an important role in the updating component of verbal WM, while the phonological loop was responsible for the serial recall component. Experiment 3 employed the visuospatial WM updating task, with the spatial tapping task to interfere with the visuospatial sketchpad. The results suggested that the visuospatial sketchpad and the central executive together dealt with the updating component, while the visuospatial sketchpad was responsible for the serial recall component by itself. These results are consistent with the findings that visuospatial sketchpad has close links with central executive, while the phonological loop is separated from the central executive. It suggests that updating visuospatial and verbal WM are not two parallel processes.