Typing Chinese words on a computer can be carried out with a phonology-based or an orthography-based method. Phonological typing constantly engages typists’ verbal working memory (VWM), while orthographic typing engages their visual-spatial working memory (VSWM). Accordingly, habitual phonological typists would develop a better VWM capacity, while habitual orthographic typists would have a bett...

Different math indices can be used to assess math potential at school entry. We evaluated whether standardized math achievement (TEMA-2 performance), core number abilities (dot enumeration, symbolic magnitude comparison), non-verbal intelligence (NVIQ) and visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM), in combination or separately, predicted mental addition problem solving speed over time. We assessed 26...

a r t i c l e i n f o The present study investigates the relation between spatial ability and visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in spatial text processing. In two experiments, participants listened to a spatial text (Experiments 1 and 2) and a non-spatial text (Experiment 1), at the same time performing a spatial or a verbal concurrent task, or no secondary task. To understand how individ...

When attention is focused on one location, its spatial distribution depends on many factors, such as the distance between the attended location and the target location, the presence of visual meridians in between them, and the way, endogenous or exogenous, by which attention is oriented. However, it is not well known how attention distributes when more than one location is endogenously or exoge...

Verbal working memory is recognized as a strong predictor of L2 reading development in the area of learning new vocabulary, reading comprehension, and overall L2 proficiency in alphabetic languages such as English. However, few studies have addressed if the same is true in logographic languages such as Japanese. Previous literature has indicated that phonology plays a weaker role in reading Jap...

Preface. Imagery, language, and visuo-spatial thinking: E pluribus unum (Robert H. Logie & Michel Denis) Chapter 1. – The generation, maintenance, and transformation of visuo-spatial mental images (David Pearson, Rossana De Beni, & Cesare Cornoldi) Chapter 2. – Individual differences in visuo-spatial working memory (Tomaso Vecchi, Louise H. Phillips, & Cesare Cornoldi) Chapter 3. – Pictures in ...

Examinations of interference between visual and spatial materials in working memory have suggested domain- and process-based fractionations of visuo-spatial working memory. The present study examined the role of central time-based resource sharing in visuo-spatial working memory and assessed its role in obtained interference patterns. Visual and spatial storage were combined with both visual an...

We define visuospatial working memory (VSWM) as the set of cognitive processes used to visualize the locations of things. VSWM is not permanent visual memory; it is a temporary visual workspace used to solve spatial problems. VSWM is ubiquitous in everyday reasoning (for example, visualizing different ways of arranging furniture in a room), and is thought to be particularly important for certai...

Many everyday tasks, such as remembering where you parked, require the capacity to store and manipulate information about the visual and spatial properties of the world. The ability to represent, remember, and manipulate spatial information is known as visuospatial working memory (VSWM). Despite substantial interest in VSWM the mechanisms responsible for this ability remain debated. One influen...

Several studies have shown that the capacity of visuo-spatial working memory is limited by complexity. Using a variant of the Corsi blocks task, this paper investigates the effect of complexity of the to-be-remembered path on visuo-spatial memory span. Redundancy was determined by three Gestalt principles: symmetry, repetition, and continuation. Experiment 1 revealed an effect of path complexit...