Effects of concurrent spatial and verbal memory loads on serial position functions of laterally presented letter strings

In this study the influence of visuospatial and verbal memory loads on the identification of laterally presented letter strings was investigated. In the asymmetry task without concurrent loads, a clear right visual field advantage for letter identification was obtained. Hemisphere-specific effects due to concurrent loads were particularly observed when the difficulty of the load tasks was increased. The effects of visuospatial loads were found to be sex related, suggesting that under heavy load conditions mental rotation selectively overloads the processing capacity of the right hemisphere in males, while in females capacity limitations were observed in both hemispheres. Concurrent visuospatial loads produced more facilitation (or less interference) for letters in the outermost positions of each visual field than for letters in the innermost positions of each visual field. The results of the verbal memory load tasks revealed that an easy verbal load task facilitated performance which was particularly manifest for the right-most letter of both the left visual field and the right visual field. A difficult verbal memory load task interfered with recognition accuracy of letters which was most marked for the center letter in the right visual field. Letter position effects obtained in this study were interpreted in terms of various processing mechanisms influencing the serial position curves.