%0 Generic %D 2011 %T Implication of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory in a route representation from a virtual environment. %A Doriane Gras %A Gyselinck, V. %X

That research investigated the role of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory (WM) on spatial representation building using a dual-task paradigm. Subjects saw movies of routes in virtual environments while performing a spatial tapping task (spatial condition), an articulatory task (verbal condition), or no task (control condition). Then, subjects had to draw the itinerary on a map (route drawing), recognize which building among two was part of the movie (visual recognition task), and place the buildings on a map (spatial location task). WM capacities were measured with the Corsi Blocks test (spatial), the digit span test (verbal), and participants took the Mental Rotation Test (MRT). Results show that accuracy was impaired in the spatial and verbal concurrent conditions compared to the control condition for route drawing and location tasks, but not for visual recognition. Moreover, subjects with the higher spatial capacities (higher score to Corsi and MRT) were more affected by tapping than others. These results show that verbal WM is involved in the construction of a spatial representation, even when only visual information is used both at learning and test. They also suggest that participants rely on their spatial WM, especially when their capacities are high.