Effects of concurrent verbal memory on recognition of stimuli from the left and right visual fields.

Abstract

Two experiments examined the effect of concurrently holding 0, 2, 4, or 6 nouns in memory on the recognition of visual stimuli briefly presented to the left or right visual fields. When stimuli to be visually recognized were complex visuospatial forms it was found that a relatively easy memroy load of 2 or 4 nouns improved visual recognition accuracy on right visual field (left-hemisphere) trials relative to the no-memory condition; however, a more difficult memory load of 6 nouns decreased visual recognition accuracy to a level slightly below the no-memory condition. There were no effects of concurrent verbal memroy on visual form recognition on left visual field (right-hemisphere) trials. When the stimuli to be visually recognized were words it was found that a relatively easy memroy load of 2 or 4 nouns improved visual recognition accuracy and a more difficult load of 6 nouns decreased visual recognition accuracy on both left and right visual field trials. The complete pattern of results indicates that several factors including cerebral hemisphere specialization, stimulus codability, selective perceptual orientation, and selective cerebral hemisphere interference interact in systematic ways to produce overall visual laterality effects.

Hemispheric differences in stimulus identification

“…The left-hemisphere advantage for these studies could have arisen from the subject's attempts to maintain the positive set by rehearsing the names or labels of the items. This effect has been reported by Hellige and Cox (1976), who found a strong left-hemisphere advantage for the recognition of verbal stimuli when subjects were concurrently rehearsing additional verbal items.…”

How Sex, Native Language, and College Major Relate to the Cognitive Strategies Used during 3-D Mental Rotation

“…in a dual-task paradigm, one might have hypothesized that the engagement of a concurrent memory load would impair (rather than enhance) performance on the primary Mr task, a hypothesis suggested by Moore (2003) and others (e.g., Pelligrino, Siegal, & Dhawan, 1975;Warren, 1977), particularly if the secondary activity is similar in nature to the processing required to perform the primary task. However, considerable research suggests that a relatively low-demand concurrent activity can actually prime performance on a primary task because it increases cognitive arousal, which in turn provides additional processing resources that can subsequently be allocated to the processing of the primary task; this results in enhanced (rather than impaired) primary task performance (Hellige, 1993;Hellige & cox, 1976;Kinsbourne, 1973Kinsbourne, , 1975Kinsbourne, 1975;Kinsbourne & cook, 1971;Kinsbourne & Hicks, 1978a;Kinsbourne & Hicks, 1978b;O'Boyle et al, 1987). the fact that Mr performance in our study was better in both the verbal and spatial load conditions as compared with the no-load condition supports the idea that a mildly demanding concurrent memory load actually primes rather than impairs Mr performance.…”

Processing speed, laterality patterns, and memory encoding as a function of hemispheric dominance

“…Hemisphere of input did not interact significantly with target or probe type , indicating faster left-hemisphere processing for both words and pictures. Several studies (e.g., Hellige & Cox, 1976 ;Kinsbourne, 1975) have shown that a concurrent verbal memory load influences laterality types for word targets, but reaction time to picture probes was significantly faster than word probes for picture targets . Paivio (1976) has proposed a dual coding model of memory encoding , in which it is postulated that material is encoded and can be retrieved in both .…”