Visuo-haptic memory representation and the influence of verbal processing

Abstract

Recent research suggests that there is a verbal component to the shared visual-haptic memory representation. The current study examined the nature of visual-haptic memory representations among 45 undergraduate participants. Participants saw novel objects in one modality (visual or haptic) and then were presented with another object in a different modality and were asked to determine if the two objects were the same or not. Some participants completed the task with no distractor, while others completed a visual distractor task, and others did a verbal distractor task. The distractor tasks did not affect the performance of participants, and this finding did not support my hypothesis that there is a verbal code for the visual-haptic memory representation. I also observed that participants responded faster for incongruent trials and when haptic examination of the stimulus occurred first. Moreover, there was a significant difference in errors for congruence when visual examination occurred first. This pattern of findings suggests that there is a dominant visual process involved in visual-haptic memory representation.