Browsing by Subject "kaksoistehtävä"

According to some models of working memory, verbal and spatial material is processed in separate systems. However, there are task environments, such as multimedia, which typically contains both verbal and spatial material. An interesting question is how these two separate systems co-operate during the use of multimedia. In this experiment, recall of words and locations was studied. Twelve participants were presented with five different conditions, of which two were verbal, two were spatial and one was a combined task. The verbal tasks were serial recall of nine words. The words were either presented in the center of the screen or in different spatial locations. The spatial task was a computerized version of the Corsi Blocks Task, in which serial recall of nine spatial locations was required. The locations were marked with a string of the letter “X”, or with a word. In the combined task participants had to recall a series of nine words and their spatial locations in the correct order. The results showed that words were recalled equally well whether presented in the center of the screen, or in different spatial locations or whether recall of their spatial locations was required. On the contrary, recall of the spatial locations was impaired if verbal material had to be recalled simultaneously. These results imply that verbal and spatial materials are processed separately and the maintenance of spatial material is more sensitive to disruption than the maintenance of verbal material. The research method and the results can be applied when navigation in web-based environments is studied. In complex web-based environments, too heavy a load on the user’s working memory may cause spatial confusion, which leads to the problem of getting lost in the web-based environment.