Visuospatial working memory and the construction of a spatial situation model in listening comprehension: An examination using a spatial tapping task

Yun Lin,Norio Matsumi

doi:10.1007/s10339-021-01063-0

Abstract

The present study investigated how visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is involved in the construction of a spatial situation model for spatial passages presented auditorily. A simple spatial tapping condition, a complex tapping condition as a target-tracking task, and a control condition, were used to analyze the role of VSWM. To understand how individuals who differ in verbal working memory (VWM) capacity (determined with a listening span test) process spatial text during dual-task performance, individual differences in VWM capacity were analyzed. In two experiments, the participants listened to a spatial text at the same time as performing a spatial concurrent task or no concurrent task. The results of the free recall test in Experiment 1 showed that there were no differences between the tapping conditions in the high VWM capacity group; the low VWM capacity group had a lower performance in both spatial tapping tasks compared to the control condition. The results of the map drawing test in Experiment 2 showed that complex spatial tapping impaired performance in comparison to simple spatial tapping and the control condition in the high VWM capacity group; in the low VWM capacity group, both spatial tapping tasks impaired recall performance. In addition, the participants with high VWM capacity demonstrated better performance. Overall, the results suggest that individuals with high VWM capacity have more resources to process verbal and spatial information than those with low VWM capacity, indicating that VWM capacity is related to the degree of the involvement of VSWM.

Highlights

In the processing of text comprehension, three levels of representation are constructed
Twenty participants with a score ≥ 4.00 were placed in the high verbal working memory (VWM) capacity group (M = 4.50, SD = 0.40), and the other 20 participants with a score ≤ 3.50 were placed in the low VWM capacity group (M = 3.25, SD = 0.26)
The results showed that the high and low VWM capacity groups were influenced differently by the two tapping tasks, i.e., with no significant difference between the tasks in the high VWM capacity group, while significantly higher recall rates were observed in the control condition than in both tapping conditions in the low VWM capacity group, which are partially in accordance with our hypothesis

Summary

Introduction

In the processing of text comprehension, three levels of representation are constructed (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). At the highest level is the propositional text-base, which is a representation of the meaning expressed in the text. When a text is presented auditorily, the construction of the spatial situation model is considered to be more difficult since a series of time-based processing steps are required (Anderson 1983). It is suggested that the verbatim, propositional textbase, and situation model are constructed at each processing level. On the basis of the construction of the spatial situation model in listening comprehension, in which the integration of representations in a variety of modalities are required along the time axis, it is proposed that the process is related to the individual differences of listeners, especially working memory (WM) capacity

Methods

Results

Conclusion