ONLINE PROCESSING OF TEXTUAL ILLUSTRATIONS - IN THE VISUOSPATIAL SKETCHPAD - EVIDENCE FOR DUAL-TASK STUDIES

We present evidence that the comprehension of illustrated text makes u se of the visuospatial sketchpad component of working memory. The resu lts from three experiments demonstrate that the comprehending of texts that are accompanied by pictures interferes with the performance of a spatial short-term memory task more than does the comprehending of te xts that have no pictures. A fourth experiment demonstrates that the i nterference is found only when there is a requirement to comprehend th e text; that is, the simple presentation of the texts and their pictur es did not degrade performance on the spatial task. Finally, we show t hat the comprehension of illustrated texts does not differentially int erfere with a verbal short-term memory task. These results are consist ent with the claim that illustrations accompanying a text encourage th e formation of a spatial mental model with the use of the working memo ry's sketchpad.