Visuospatial Sketchpad
Visuospatial Sketchpad - Related Videos
06:03
Motion-induced Blindness
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2023
Source: Laboratory of Jonathan Flombaum—Johns Hopkins University One thing becomes very salient after basic exposure to the science of visual perception and sensation: what people see is a creation of the brain. As a result people may fail to see things, see things that are not there, or see things in a distorted way. To distinguish between physical reality and what people perceive, scientists use the term awareness to refer to what people perceive. To study awareness, vision scientists often...
09:05
Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)
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Cited by 26 •
2017
Working memory predicts a significant amount of variance for a variety of cognitive tasks, including speaking, reading, and writing. However, few tools are available to assess working memory in children. We present an innovative, computer-based battery that comprehensively assesses different components of working memory in school-age children.
10:37
The Split Brain
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2023
Source: Laboratories of Jonas T. Kaplan and Sarah I. Gimbel—University of Southern California The study of how damage to the brain affects cognitive functioning has historically been one of the most important tools for cognitive neuroscience. While the brain is one of the most well protected parts of the body, there are many events that can affect the functioning of the brain. Vascular issues, tumors, degenerative diseases, infections, blunt force traumas, and neurosurgery are just some of the...
FAQs
Its limited capacity restricts how many visual or spatial elements can be maintained and manipulated at once. Because information is held only briefly, performance depends on the demands of the mental activity, such as retaining a pattern while examining its arrangement. This constraint helps explain why complex visual problem solving can become more difficult as information increases.
The visuospatial sketchpad does not operate in isolation from working memory. Its interaction with the phonological loop allows psychological tasks to involve both visual-spatial representations and information maintained through the phonological system. Studying this relationship helps researchers examine how different working-memory processes contribute together when people interpret, organize, or manipulate information.
Mental rotation requires a person to transform an imagined shape or arrangement, while spatial rehearsal maintains location or relationship information long enough to use it. These functions show that the system supports more than passive visual retention. They are especially relevant when a person must reason about objects, layouts, or positions that are not currently visible.
Common assessments include pattern-recall tasks, spatial-sequence tasks, and judgments about object locations. Each type asks participants to retain or manipulate visual-spatial information and then produce a response based on what they remember. Researchers can use differences in performance across these tasks to investigate how visual features, locations, and spatial relationships are handled.
Navigation depends on maintaining relevant locations and spatial relationships while the surrounding information changes or is no longer directly available. Reading diagrams similarly requires people to keep track of visual arrangements and interpret how elements relate to one another. The system therefore provides a psychological basis for using internal visual-spatial representations during these activities.
Changes in performance after visual or spatial distraction can indicate how strongly a task depends on maintaining visual-spatial information. Researchers may examine whether participants make more errors or have greater difficulty with pattern recall, spatial sequences, or object-location judgments. These outcomes help connect observed task performance with the functioning of working-memory processes.