A Novel Visuospatial Working Memory Task to Explore the Effect of Memory Load and Performance

摘要

Visuospatial working memory is an essential cognitive ability that enables us to encode, maintain, manipulate and retrieve information in visual space to facilitate the action of ongoing activity. Despite having pivotal role across a range of daily activities, visuospatial working memory needs further exploration. Previous studies have used task paradigm, which do not simulate day-to-day activity. We designed a novel task involving simultaneous encoding, retention, active manipulation and retrieval, which we do routinely for executing daily activities like driving, cooking etc. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the effect of memory load and performance on visuospatial working memory using a novel task paradigm. We speculated that the increase in visuospatial memory load could help in elucidating the difference in the performance level among humans. Participants were grouped into two groups i.e. good and poor performers, based on the total number of errors committed in the task paradigm. Two-way ANOVA was applied to examine the effect of memory load and performance level on the number of errors committed and the search time taken by the participants. In the higher memory load, the errors committed and the search time taken by the participants significantly increased. We found that the discrimination between good from poor performers is more apparent from the errors committed in the higher memory load. More interestingly, we could not find any difference in the search time taken by the good performers from the poor performers. The outcome of the current study could be of help to improve our understanding on the neural basis of visuospatial working memory and possibly be applied to screen candidates for the job recruitment that demands visuospatial working memory.