Biomedical subjects

Francesca Pazzaglia

Publications and source records attributed to Francesca Pazzaglia.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The generation and maintenance of visual mental images: evidence from image type and aging.

Imagery is a multi-componential process involving different mental operations. This paper addresses whether separate processes underlie the generation, maintenance and transformation of mental images or whether these cognitive processes rely on the same mental functions. We also examine the influence of age on these mental operations for independence of components. In Experiment 1, younger (22 years) and older (69 years) adults generated and maintained general, specific, contextual and autobiographical visual mental images evoked in response to concrete nouns. The older adults had longer generation times, but there was no difference between the two groups on maintenance. Both groups had shortest generation and maintenance times for general images, whereas only the older adults took longest in generating autobiographical images. In Experiment 2, the total maintenance time and number of transformations for each type of image were compared in another group of younger and older adults. General images were less transformed and more subject to decay for both groups. The older people maintained the autobiographical mental images for longest compared to other image types. In conclusion, image generation, maintenance and transformation seem to be differently affected by type of image and aging, supporting a model of their cognitive segregation.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Working memory components and imagery instructions in the elaboration of a spatial mental model.

The paper investigates the involvement of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory during the processing of spatial texts via a dual-task paradigm. Subjects were presented with three texts describing locations from a route perspective, and had either to imagine themselves moving along a route in surroundings or to rehearse verbal information. Concurrently they had to perform a spatial tapping task, an articulatory task, or no secondary task. Performance on a verification test used to assess the product of comprehension showed that the concurrent tapping task impaired performance in the imagery instructions group but not in the repetition instructions group, and caused the beneficial effect of imagery instructions to vanish. This result was not observed with the articulatory task, where interference effects were similar in both instructions groups. Performance on the concurrent tasks confirmed the pattern obtained with the verification test. In addition, results seem partly dependent on the capacity of spatial working memory as measured by the Corsi Blocks Test. We argue that these results clarify the processes of the construction of a spatial mental model, and confirm that the visuo-spatial working memory is involved in mental imagery.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Evidence for a double dissociation between spatial-simultaneous and spatial-sequential working memory in visuospatial (nonverbal) learning disabled children.

The paper describes the performance of three children with specific visuospatial working memory (VSWM) impairments (Study 1) and three children with visuospatial (nonverbal) learning disabilities (Study 2) assessed with a battery of working memory (WM) tests and with a number of school achievement tasks. Overall, performance on WM tests provides evidence of a double dissociation between spatial-simultaneous processes, underpinning the memorization item positioning in a spatial configuration, and spatial-sequential processes, which allow memorization of the presentation order. In both groups of children of the two studies, a selective impairment either on spatial-sequential or on spatial-simultaneous working memory tasks was observed. These data support the existence of -simultaneous and -sequential modality-dependent processes in visuospatial working memory and confirm the importance of distinguishing between different subtypes of visuospatial (nonverbal) learning-disabled children.

Child↗

PubMed2006

The effects of verbal and spatial interference in the encoding and retrieval of spatial and nonspatial texts.

The paper investigates the specific roles of visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) and verbal working memory (VWM) in encoding and retrieval of information conveyed by spatial and nonspatial texts. In two experiments, a total of 109 undergraduate students-54 in Experiment 1, 55 in Experiment 2-listened to spatial and nonspatial texts while performing a spatial (Experiment 1) or verbal (Experiment 2) concurrent task during either encoding or retrieval. Text memorisation and comprehension were tested by free-recall and sentence-verification tasks. The results show that a concurrent spatial task is detrimental to memory performance for spatial text more than for nonspatial text. In contrast, a concurrent verbal task is equally damaging to memory performance for both spatial and nonspatial texts. Moreover, a spatial task interferes with both encoding and retrieval, in contrast with a verbal task, where the interference effect is active only when the task is performed during encoding. Overall, these findings show the involvement of VSWM in the construction and reactivation of mental models derived from spatial descriptions, and the role played by VWM in construction, but not reactivation, of mental models derived from spatial and nonspatial texts.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Are people with high and low mental rotation abilities differently susceptible to the alignment effect?

We investigated whether the alignment effect (Levine et al, 1982 Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 111 157-175) is influenced by mental rotation abilities. In two experiments, groups of undergraduate students with high and low performance in mental rotation tasks were required to study either schematic (experiment 1) or more complex (experiment 2) maps, and to perform a number of pointing tasks adopting a perspective which could be aligned, misaligned (45 degrees, 135 degrees), or counteraligned (180 degrees) with the perspective assumed during learning. Cognitive styles in spatial representation have also been considered. Results of experiment 1 show that people with low performance in mental rotation tasks prefer to adopt a representation of space focused more on landmarks. Their performance in the pointing tasks depends on the alignment conditions, with more errors in the counteraligned condition followed by the two misaligned and aligned ones. In contrast to this, high-ability mental rotators prefer survey and route spatial representations and are affected only by the aligned and non-aligned conditions. In the second experiment, practice was studied as a function of mental rotation and alignment. The group high in mental rotation ability was found to be free from the alignment effect in the pointing tasks performed after the final of four learning phases.

Cognition↗