Spatial influences on verbal memory – SPATVERB

Spatialization is a phenomenon by which spatial information can supplement cognitive processes to memorize serial information not necessarily spatial beforehand. Although spatialization seems to possess an innate dimension, its left-right direction also appears to be culturally determined. For instance, we showed (Guida et al., 2018) that spatialization of a series of items to-be-recalled immediately depends on the direction of reading/writing. The initial experiments of the present project will determine how list lengths can be optimized to fit individual working memory capacity. We then use spatialization as a tool to study serial-order coding in individuals required to acquire serial verbal information in Hebb-repetition tasks. We apply this method to determine in particular the spatialization status of sub-patterns. Finally, we apply the method to study visuospatial attention in dyslexia in which serial-order coding has been shown to be impaired and we target educational tools.