The learning of visuospatial and visuoverbal representations temporarily integrated in working memory

• Grant number: 15/23331-8
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2016
• Effective date (End): March 20, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Cognitive Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Cesar Alexis Galera
• Grantee: Ricardo Basso Garcia
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The immediate recall of a sequence of stimuli is a classical short-term memory procedure which has been useful to comprehend many aspects of human memory, such as learning - the transference of information to long-term memory. Several studies have shown that the repetition of a sequence of stimuli among other random sequences leads to a better recall of the repeated sequence during the test, even when participants were not informed about the repetition and were not aware of it. This is known as the Hebb repetition effect, which has been observed for verbal, spatial, and visual stimuli. However, the transference of integrated information to long-term memory has not been systematically investigated. The present research project proposes a series of experiments to investigate the learning of simple stimuli (verbal, visual, and spatial) and integrated stimuli (visuospatial and visuoverbal stimuli). Data analyses will be carried out on the proportion of correct answers for repeated and random sequences of stimuli, and data will be useful to get a better understanding of the temporary memorization and the learning of simple and integrated information. (AU)