Benefit of enactment over oral repetition of verbal instruction does not require additional working memory during encoding

Abstract

For this research, we used a dual-task approach to investigate the involvement of working memory in following written instructions. In two experiments, participants read instructions to perform a series of actions on objects and then recalled the instructions either by spoken repetition or performance of the action sequence. Participants engaged in concurrent articulatory suppression, backward-counting, and spatial-tapping tasks during the presentation of the instructions, in order to disrupt the phonological-loop, central-executive, and visuospatial-sketchpad components of working memory, respectively. Recall accuracy was substantially disrupted by all three concurrent tasks, indicating that encoding and retaining verbal instructions depends on multiple components of working memory. The accuracy of recalling the instructions was greater when the actions were performed than when the instructions were repeated, and this advantage was unaffected by the concurrent tasks, suggesting that the benefit of enactment over oral repetition does not cost additional working memory resources.

Fig. 1

Display of the following-instruction tasks in Experiments 1 and 2

Fig. 2

Mean correct recall of actions (with standard errors) as a function of concurrent task and type of recall in Experiment 1. Note that the dependent variable was the mean number of correct actions per instruction sequence

Fig. 3

Mean correct recall of actions (with standard errors) as a function of concurrent task and type of recall in Experiment 2. Note that the dependent variable was the mean number of correct actions per instruction sequence