A systematic examination and modeling of STM across modalities and domains: a step towards reconciling modularity and functional equivalence

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Serial order processing and retention of information over the short term are at the basis of a wide range of cognitive activities. Those activities are not restrictively related to language but also cover the spatial domain. Nevertheless, most of the research work has focused on short-term memory (STM) for verbal information. Due to the sequential nature of language, research on verbal STM has been preoccupied with serial order processing and employed list learning paradigms such as the classical serial recall task. Research on memory for spatial information has, however, centred its interest on the short-term retention of a single item or an array of simultaneously presented objects mostly through recognition and change-detection paradigms. Evidence of dissociations between verbal and spatial has accumulated over the last two decades and led to the almost universal adoption of modularity. Indeed, the study of STM has been largely driven by the concept of modularity whereby cognition is viewed as the functioning of modules processing specific types of information (verbal and spatial) and modalities (auditory and visual). However, an emerging body of evidence challenges the veracity of the modular view of STM. Indeed, when verbal and spatial STM tasks are carefully equated in terms of process requirements, a number of phenomena classically associated with verbal STM are extended to the spatial domain. The present program of research will attempt to narrow the gap between opposing views of STM and balance the evidence for and against modularity. The empirical work is divided in three themes according to key objectives of the proposal: i) To establish the close link between perceptual organisation and STM for spatial information; ii) To revisit phenomena associated with the so-called visual short-term memory (VSTM) and extend the testing of concepts to serial memory; iii) To test the applicability of the perceptual-gestural framework - an embodied cognition view of STM - to account for spatial STM phenomena. The proposed program of research will provide data that should contribute to reconcile apparently contradictory sets of findings of functional equivalence and modularity, and provide evidence for a reinterpretation of STM.