Abstract
Many theories have proposed that visual working memory plays an important role in visual search. In contrast, by showing that a nonspatial working memory load did not interfere with search efficiency, Woodman, Vogel, and Luck (2001) recently proposed that the role of working memory in visual search is insignificant. However, the visual search process may interfere with spatial working memory. In the present study, a visual search task was performed concurrently with either a spatial working memory task (Experiment 1) or a nonspatial working memory task (Experiment 2). We found that the visual search process interfered with a spatial working memory load, but not with a nonspatial working memory load. These results suggest that there is a distinction between spatial and nonspatial working memory in terms of interactions with visual search tasks. These results imply that the visual search process and spatial working memory storage require the same limited-capacity mechanisms.
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A portion of the present study was presented at the second annual meeting of the Asian Conference on Vision, Gyeongju, Korea, 2002. The present study was supported by Korea Research Foundation Grant KRF-2002-074-HS1003. We thank Chan-Sup Chung, Keetaek Kham, Marvin Chun, and Helena Paterson for continuous interest in and helpful comments on the present study.
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Oh, SH., Kim, MS. The role of spatial working memory in visual search efficiency. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 275–281 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196570
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196570
