Working memory for movement patterns: a direct comparison of memory spans for body and hand movements in dual-task situations

Abstract

In this experiment, 36 participants engaged in one of three span tasks; digit span, body movement span, or hand movement span task, in which they were asked to remember visually presented sequences of digits, whole body movement patterns, or hand movement patterns, respectively. As in a standard memory span procedure, the items within each sequence were recalled in order. Participants were presented with increasingly longer sequences of the items, and span score was defined as the number of items in the longest sequence a participant could recall perfectly. The span tasks were tested under three concurrent task conditions; no concurrent task control, concurrent articulation task, and concurrent body-related movement task. The concurrent movement task interfered with performance on both body movement and hand movement span tasks, but not on the digit span task, while the concurrent articulation task interfered with performance on all of the three span tasks. It is suggested that memory for movement patterns, which is involved in the body and band movement spans, would be mediated by a common motor-processing system.