Travelling through time and space in working memory.

Abstract

We looked at how spatial and temporal position influence access of items in working memory. In three experiments, we probed people to recall items from a sequence of digits presented in a horizontal array. In Experiment 1, we found that decorrelating spatial and temporal position led to a drop in accuracy, and that people confused items based on both temporal and spatial position. Latencies increased across input positions in the correlated condition, but not in the uncorrelated condition. In Experiments 2-4, we probed people to recall multiple items sequentially, and found that latencies increased with both temporal and spatial distance between probes, and that longer and more complex output sequences across positions produced slower recall. The results suggest that both temporal and spatial position are used to access items in working memory, and that people travel through a mental representation of space to access items. However, the full pattern of results is complex, and challenges existing theories of the involvement of time and space in working memory.