The empirical reach of the ´mental whiteboard´: A commentary on Ginsburg et al. (2017)

Abstract

In a recent study, Ginsburg and colleagues (2017) explored the boundary conditions of the ordinal position effect, which refers to the horizontal format with which (non-spatial) item sequences have been observed to be represented in working memory. On the basis of 6 experiments on the ordinal position effect, they conclude that serial order in working memory is spatial by nature only if the memoranda are processed semantically. In this commentary we explain why we feel that Ginsburg et al.’s (2017) conclusions are premature, and how they inspire specific guidelines for a more optimal study of ´spatialization´ for serial order in working memory.