Near-independent capacities and highly constrained output orders in the simultaneous free recall of auditory-verbal and visuo-spatial stimuli.

Abstract

Three experiments examined the immediate free recall (IFR) of auditory-verbal and visuospatial materials from single-modality and dual-modality lists. In Experiment 1, we presented participants with between 1 and 16 spoken words, with between 1 and 16 visuospatial dot locations, or with between 1 and 16 words and dots with synchronized onsets. We found that for dual-modality lists (a) overall performance, initial recalls, and serial position curves were largely determined by the within-modality list lengths, (b) there was only a small degree of dual-task trade-off (that was limited to the visuospatial items), and (c) there were strongly constrained output orders: participants tended to alternate between words and dots from equivalent or neighboring serial positions. In Experiments 2 and 3, we compared lists of 6 single-modality items with dual-modality lists of 6 words and 6 dots with synchronous or alternating onsets (Experiment 2), or random but asynchronous onsets (Experiment 3). In all 3 dual-modality conditions, we again found only a small trade-off in visuospatial (but not verbal) IFR performance. There were similarly highly constrained output orders with the synchronous and alternating onsets, and these patterns were present but attenuated with the randomized onsets. We propose that both auditory-verbal and visuospatial list items are associated with a common temporal episodic context that is used to guide cross-modal retrieval, and we speculate that the limited, asymmetric interference could arise because the less variable representations of the dots share only a relatively small subset of features with the more variable representations of the words.

Time is of the essence: Exploring temporal and spatial organisation in episodic memory

“…However, we did also observed temporal contiguity following spatial encoding and spatial continuity following an anticipated temporal test which contrasts with Hintzman’s predictions. Overall, as reported elsewhere in the literature ( Cortis Mack et al, 2018 ), our findings support the notion that spatial and temporal context information coexists in memory and can be activated even when incongruent to the encoding instructions. We addressed the issue of the incidental paradigm further in Experiment 4.…”

“…Indeed, Polyn et al (2009) suggest that at the time of learning, unrelated items are likely to form representational clusters based on either temporal or spatial types of information, which can then be employed as retrieval cues. In addition, Cortis Mack et al (2018) demonstrated the coexistence of both spatial and temporal information in memory formation. Thus, if information can be organised as different representations (e.g., temporal and spatial) at encoding, then it is possible that both types of information will be stored in memory.…”

“…All in all, the literature remains mixed on the question of whether encoding the temporal contiguity together with learned information is a necessity, and we wish to tackle this question with the present article. Our driving hypothesis is that multiple representations, temporal and spatial in this case ( Cortis Mack et al, 2018 ; Polyn et al, 2009 ), are possible for the same item, and that these representations both coexist and are inherent (see also McNamara et al, 1992 ). During retrieval, participants will then, either automatically or deliberately, activate one or both of these representations that will then cue retrieval of the rest of the sequence.…”

Recall initiation instructions influence how space and time interact in memory

“…Little is known, however, about whether time and space interact. Earlier studies found a temporal contiguity effect even when spatial stimuli serve as the memoranda (Cortis Mack et al, 2018;Mundorf et al, 2022); however, these studies did not measure spatial lag-CRPs and were therefore unable to directly compare spatial and temporal lag-CRPs. Leveraging their measure of spatial contiguity, Gibson et al took a first step in exploring how spatial and temporal associative dimensions might interact.…”

“…A central question of the current work is whether the temporal and spatial associative dimensions interact during memory search, possibly trading off with each other. It has long been known that memories are associated along many dimensions, such as time, space, and meaning (Cortis Mack et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2013;Pantelis et al, 2008;Polyn et al, 2009). However, relatively little is known about how the memory system combines information from different dimensions during memory search (Healey & Uitvlugt 2019).…”