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Biomedical subjects

M M Smyth

Publications and source records attributed to M M Smyth.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Short-term retention of spatial information.

Four experiments investigated the recall of a subspan set of spatial locations over short intervals of 5 and 15 s. The intervals were filled by one of three activities: simple tapping, repeated tapping at spatial targets and backwards counting. Spatial tapping, which decreases spatial memory span, led to further small but significant errors in recall, as did backward counting. These errors were larger than those found with simple tapping over the same intervals. Backwards counting led to further decreases in recall performance if it was also present during encoding, but this was not the case for spatial tapping. Spatial tapping had little effect on recall of three digits, whereas backwards counting had a large effect, which was much larger than that found with spatial memory items in any condition. The results are interpreted in terms of the use of place-keeping functions in spatial memory sequences, which may not be specific to spatial material.

Female↗
PubMed1990

Space and movement in working memory.

Encoding seen movement of another human body requires visuo-spatial processing, and recall involves motor activity. However, encoding whole body movement patterns is affected differently by patterned and spatial secondary tasks, and this difference is reversed for encoding of spatial targets for movement (Smyth, Pearson, & Pendleton, 1988). The experiments reported here investigate the rehearsal of such movement patterns and their recall over unfilled and filled intervals. Performing, watching, or encoding a sequence of spatial positions while carrying a memory load of movement patterns did not affect recall of those movements, whereas performing, watching, or encoding a further set of patterned movements reduced the number recalled from the original set. However, memory for a series of locations in space was not affected by watching patterned movements during the interval, and only order information was affected by watching movement to a series of spatial locations during the interval. The results are discussed in terms of the independence of rehearsal mechanisms for spatial sequencing and movement patterns.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Visual control of movement patterns and the grammar of action.

In this experiment adult subjects copied three types of material (letters, reversed letters and geometric shapes) with and without sight of the hand and the writing trace. Without vision the number of movement segments decreased and the sequence and direction of movements were altered. This means that subjects did not use a fixed stored representation to produce items nor did they obey the rules of Goodnow and Levine's (1973) grammar of action. When spatial location is made more difficult by the removal of vision, movement production is simplified to reduce the number of relocations required. The use of consistent directions of movement depends on the ability to use visual control of spatial location.

Form Perception↗