Working memory components in survey and route spatial text processing.

The main goal of the current study was to investigate whether different working memory components underpin route and survey spatial text processing. Experiment 1 was devoted to verifying the involvement of spatial and verbal working memory in processing of route and survey texts. Participants listened to either survey or route texts and concurrently performed either a ST or an AS task. In line with previous studies (De Beni et al. 2005; Deyzac et al. 2006), both concurrent tasks were expected to produce an interference effect on route text processing. Since Deyzac et al. (2006) found a smaller disruptive effect of the ST task on survey than route text processing, the present research aimed to replicate their results with longer and more complex texts, with the similar expectation that ST would hamper processing of route texts to a greater extent than survey texts. Furthermore, the study expected to confirm the involvement of the verbal component of working memory in the processing of both types of text. Experiment 2 was designed to compare the interference effect of a spatial sequential and a spatial simultaneous task on the comprehension and memorization of survey and route descriptions. Both tasks required memorization of configurations of dots, presented either sequentially or simultaneously. Since processing of the route text and performance of the sequential task were both presumed to require order and motor encoding, for the route text alone, greater impairment of processing was expected by the concurrent sequential task than by the simultaneous task.