title: Letter string processing and visual short-term memory.
abstract: The present study investigated whether expertise with letter string processing influences visual short-term memory capacity. Specifically, we examined whether performance in a change-detection task would vary as a function of stimulus type (letters vs. symbols) and type of display (horizontal, vertical, and circular). Participants were asked to detect a one-character change in a briefly presented character array following a delay of 900 ms. Concurrent articulation was used to limit effects of rehearsal. Type of display significantly affected performance with letters, but not with symbols, with a selective increase in change-detection accuracy for horizontally presented letter arrays compared with vertical and circular arrays. These findings confirm the standard limits of storage in visual short-term memory, but critically reveal a selective advantage for letter arrays over symbol arrays when presented horizontally. Such an advantage is probably due to the utilization of a specialized encoding mechanism built up over years of reading experience.
authors.affiliation: CNRS and Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France. maria.ktori@univ-provence.fr
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ktori
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grainger
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dufau
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities; D014825:Vocabulary