What is it like to do a visuo-spatial working memory task : a qualitative phenomenological study of the visual span task

Oblak, Aleš (author), Dragan, Oskar (author), Slana Ozimič, Anka (author), Kordeš, Urban (author), Purg, Nina (author), Bon, Jurij (author), Repovš, Grega (author)

Working memory is typically measured with specifically designed psychological tasks. When evaluating the validity of working memory tasks, we commonly focus on the reliability of the outcome measurements. Only rarely do we focus on how participants experience these tasks. Accounting for lived experience of working memory task may help us better understand variability in working memory performance and conscious experience in general. We replicated recently established protocols for the phenomenological investigation of working memory using the visual span task. We collected subjective reports from eighteen healthy participants (10 women) aged 21 to 35 years. We observed that working memory can be phenomenologically characterized at three different time scales: background feelings, strategies, and tactics. On the level of tactics, we identified transmodality (i.e., how one modality of lived experience can be transformed into another one) as the central phenomenological dynamic at play during working memory task performance.

• Language: English
• Keywords: visual span, working memory, phenomenology, neurophenomenology, psychological task, short term memory, measurement
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts; PEF - Faculty of Education
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 01.02.2024
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: 29 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 118, art. 103628
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-154128
• UDC: 159.953.2.072
• ISSN on article: 1053-8100
• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103628
• COBISS.SI-ID: 182588163
• Publication date in RUL: 26.01.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Consciousness and cognition
• Shortened title: Conscious. cogn.
• Publisher: Academic Press
• ISSN: 1053-8100
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1456917

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: vidni razpon, delovni spomin, fenomenologija, nevrofenomenologija, psihološka naloga, merjenje