Investigating the effect of external presentation distance on the internal spatial organisation of information in the human mind

Hannah L Fenwick

Studies investigating serial order in working memory have shown that participants from Western cultures are faster at responding to items presented at the beginning of a sequence using their left hand and faster at responding to items at the end with their right hand. This is known as the spatial positional associations of response codes (SPoARC) effect. The SPoARC effect provides evidence that recently presented information is spatially organised in the cognitive system along a horizontal axis. This study investigated the flexibility of spatialisation by testing the effect that distance between presentation of items on a screen has on the magnitude of the SPoARC effect. Using three presentation conditions: central, narrow, and wide, I hypothesised that a SPoARC effect would be found in all conditions and would be larger in the wide over the narrow condition. Participants consisted of 64 adults aged 18-55 years old. Using a computer, participants were presented with four random letters, followed by a single probe letter. Only if the probe had been in the sequence, participants made a yes or no response using a keyboard. Multilevel modelling was performed to determine the interactions between item position and hand of response. The results showed SPoARC effects in all three conditions. A regression coefficient comparison showed no significant differences between conditions. These results indicate further studies are needed to explore the effect that distance between items has on the SPoARC effect. Investigating mechanisms for spatialisation in the cognitive system is essential for understanding how the mind works. Keywords: SPoARC effect, ordinal position effect, serial order coding, spatial coding, positional tagging, spatialisation, working memory, mental whiteboard hypothesis

Investigating the effect of external presentation distance on the internal spatial organisation of information in the human mind

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