Submitted on September 17, 2004
Accepted on December 22, 2004
PARALLEL PROCESSING OF SPATIAL AND SERIAL ORDER INFORMATION BEFORE MOVING TO A REMEMBERED TARGET
Nikolaos Smyrnis*, Giovanni d' Avossa, Christos Theleritis, Asimakis Mantas, Alpay Ozcan, and Ioannis Evdokimidis
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: smyrnis{at}med.uoa.gr.
Information storage and retrieval from working memory is limited by the capacity of storage mechanisms and attentional processes. Nevertheless, it has been shown that processing of multiple features can proceed independently in working memory. In this study we investigated how serial order and directional information are processed when executing a movement to a remembered target direction. We compared the performance of 11 healthy subjects in three motor working memory tasks, one with a varying spatial memory load, one with a varying serial order memory load and one in which memory load was varied for both features. We found that the spatial information memory load does not affect the ability to store information about serial order and vice-versa. Furthermore, movement response latencies indicated that retrieval of information about both features proceeds simultaneously. These results strongly favor independent, parallel working memory systems for processing space and order information in the motor system.
