SPATIAL WORKING MEMORY

Spatial Working Memory



Spatial Working Memory

Introduction

Theories of spatial working memory have been developed from empirical studies of healthy children and from neuropsychological investigations of individuals who suffer from cognitive deficits as a result of brain damage. Most theories agree that spatial working memory is a limited capacity system that maintains information over periods of seconds. There is also general agreement that the contents of spatial working memory are subject to displacement by new input, and that WM interacts with and is supported by other parts of the cognitive system, such as stored knowledge or the products of perception. However, theories differ as to the detailed architecture and functioning of the spatial working memory system.

Broadly, there are two classes of spatial working memory theory. One type of theory views WM as an embedded component of a single unitary memory system. By this view, the contents of WM reflect what is currently activated from long-term memory, with an attentional mechanism providing a means of focusing on task-relevant activated information. Although this view of spatial working memory can successfully explain why expertise in a particular field apparently enhances WM capacity, it does not easily account for the retention and manipulation of novel material in WM.

In addition, the view that spatial working memory is no more than the activation of information in long-term memory is not consistent with the selective impairment of memory resources observed in individuals who suffer from cognitive deficits as a result of brain damage. For example, some children demonstrate very poor performance on immediate memory tasks, but normal performance on memory tasks involving the long-term retention of information. Conversely, others have shown normal immediate memory performance with poor retrieval from long-term memory, or poor long-term learning. This type of dissociation is not consistent with the theory that spatial working memory comprises temporary activation of information from long-term memory, since this would predict that if long-term memory access is impaired then temporary activation of long-term knowledge should also be impaired.

Discussion

This paper deals with testing the hypothesis for a developmental psychologist, he was interested in children's construction play and the factors which determined the ease with which children are able to construct models. He has designed a study in which children were tested for Spatial Working Memory and then presented with a series of Lego models of varying complexity to build at age of 8 retested when they were 12 years old.

Research has addressed connections within and across levels. Within-level research is aimed primarily at expanding descriptive data, identifying component foundations of a spatial skill, or evaluating the internal coherence of a theoretical model. Between-level research is aimed at linking constructs across levels, as in linking brain activation patterns to their concurrent performance on mental rotation, students' spatial skills to success in science and mathematics, or performance on projective and Euclidean tasks to performance on mapping tasks.

Spatial Working Memory scores at age 8 were used to categorize the children as having either high or low spatial ...