Fixation Effects on Forward and Backward Recall in a Spatial Working Memory Task

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate whether fixation on the items to be remembered provided a beneficial effect on spatial working memory. A spatial working memory task based on the Corsi blocks task was assigned to 24 participants (12 men, 12 women; M age = 21.5 yr., SD = 1.3, range = 18 - 24) who were later asked to recall a sequence of targets in forward and backward order. When participants were asked to memorize the sequence while maintaining fixation on each target, both beneficial and disruptive effects were found in the recall performance for backward recall, but not for forward recall. Results suggest that some memory processes that proceed without fixation on the presented items are more important for backward recall.