A horizontal–vertical anisotropy in spatial short-term memory

Smith, Daniel T.

doi:10.1080/13506285.2022.2042446

A horizontal–vertical anisotropy in spatial short-term memory

Smith, Daniel T.

Authors

Professor Dan Smith daniel.smith2@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Visual perception and saccadic eye-movements are more precise when directed at isoeccentric locations along the horizontal compared to vertical meridian. This effect is known as horizontal-vertical anisotropy (HVA). Given that the eye-movement system plays an important role in spatial short-term memory (STM) it was hypothesized that spatial STM would also show a horizontal-vertical anisotropy. Consistent with this hypothesis an online experiment revealed a significant HVA in spatial STM (Experiment 1). This effect persisted even when eye-movements were precluded by using very short display durations (Experiment 2). However, there was no HVA in a colour span or orientation change detection task. It is argued that the HVA in spatial STM may result from greater imprecision in the representation of spatial locations along the vertical meridian relative to the horizontal meridian in the spatial maps underpinning spatial STM, a bilateral field advantage, or some combination of these mechanisms.

Citation

Smith, D. T. (2022). A horizontal–vertical anisotropy in spatial short-term memory. Visual Cognition, 30(4), 245-253. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2022.2042446

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Feb 8, 2022
Online Publication Date	Feb 24, 2022
Publication Date	2022
Deposit Date	Feb 24, 2022
Publicly Available Date	Feb 24, 2022
Journal	Visual Cognition
Print ISSN	1350-6285
Electronic ISSN	1464-0716
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	30
Issue	4
Pages	245-253
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2022.2042446

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© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.