Traces of Intellectual Working Memory Tasks on Visual-Spatial Short-Term Memory

We measured the sensitivity in detecting a change in the location of one of two visual targets over a short period of time to investigate the impact of a secondary intellectual symbolic WM task on the visuospatial short-term memory, in a dual-task paradigm. We observed that engaging in a WM task that involves manipulation of symbolic information impacts the ability to detect a location change, and this impact does not change when more time is allocated to the WM task. Furthermore, we observed that the impact of a mental sorting task on the ability to detect location changes is spatially selective to the horizontal orientation. Our results suggest a possible role for sensory-motor working memory, which supports perceptionaction schemas in manipulation of information during the intellectual symbolic working memory tasks.