Variations in the Beneficial Effects of Spatial Structure and Serial Organisation on Working Memory Span in Humans and Other Species

Abstract

This chapter reviews studies of spontaneous search in large-scale settings and studies featuring variations of the Corsi test in humans and animals. It aims to highlight a synergy of working memory (WM) processes and the use of spatio-temporal structure and explain its underpinnings within a comparative framework. The chapter starts by showing that the degree of organisation of serial search patterns spontaneously deployed by humans and animals in simulated foraging tasks is associated with a reduction of WM errors. Then, by comparing studies conducted on different species, it exposes a parallel between the degree of search organisation and taxonomic relatedness to humans. Such a parallel could indicate that a hallmark of the cognition of humans and closely related species is the ability to offload WM by developing serially organised search patterns that exploit the spatial structure of the environment. However, a causal relationship between serial organisation and search efficiency can only be inferred with serial recall tasks, where the structure of specific sequences can be systematically manipulated. Thus, studies using variations of the Corsi test are considered subsequently, which suggest that humans might enjoy an exceptional aptitude to benefit from the spatio-temporal structure in serial tasks, despite remarkable memory abilities shown by other primate species as well. The extent to which the benefit of spatial organisation in human WM span must be mediated by perceptual grouping processes is then considered. To clarify this issue, recent experiments using virtual reality to compare serial recall in small visual displays that afford perceptual grouping and in immersive navigational spaces that cannot do so are discussed. The results of these latter experiments indicate that the effects of structure in serial recall emerge in conditions not affording grouping at perceptual level. Thus, it is suggested that more central representational processes play a role in the interaction between spatio-temporal organisation and working memory span in humans.

Keywords: Comparative cognition; Corsi test; Evolution; Memory; Search.