The effect of a word with a spatial meaning on visuospatial working memory

This resource provides a reaction time experiments within the context of the SFB 833 project B4.
The current research is aimed to examine whether task-irrelevant word meaning would affect visuospatial working memory processes, specifically, recognition of visual location.
he paradigm used in working memory research was applied. In a series of four experiments, participants memorized a dot, and in a recognition test, they had to answer whether a dot was in the same position or not. The word as a distractor appeared during a retention interval, being presented visually in the center of the screen (1st, 2nd experiments), or auditorily (3rd, 4th experiments). The stimuli were directional words ('up' and 'down', 1st, 4th experiments) or words with referents typically located in the upper or lower part of space (e.g. 'sun' or 'grass', 2nd and 3rd experiments). The results could be interpreted in the framework of attention, models of working memory, and embodied cognition.