Although in recent years there has been a substantial increase in research on
spatial memory, and in particularly visual-spatial memory, there seems to be a
few studies on verbal-spatial memory. The present study examined encoding of
verbal-spatial information involving locations of furniture in what were called
a T-shaped house and a F-shaped house because the shapes of layout plans of the
houses resembled the letter T or F. Encoding demands of the verbal-spatial
memory task were assessed by using a dual task methodology. Locations of 7
objects were learned under single task or dual task conditions. The participants
were presented a layout plan of a house drawn on an A4 paper to get a mental
image of the rooms before they listened to verbal descriptions about locations
of the objects. They were also given a list containing the names of the objects
so that they did not need to remember the names of the objects but just their
locations in a room. The dual task performance led to a significant drop in the
number of correct locations recalled and an increase in mislocated objects. The
present results are discussed in relation to the findings of Salway & Logie?s
(1995) study.
Keywords: Verbal spatial memory, short-term spatial memory, dual task, encoding processes, executive processes