The Role Of Phonological Loop And Visuo-spatial Sketchpad In A Virtual Maze Wayfinding

The role of phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad in wayfinding was tested in a virtual maze using dual-task paradigm through two experiments.In experiment 1,a total of 108 college students were selected.A 2×3 between-subjects design was adopted,with gender and experimental conditions(control group/ phonological dualtask group/visuospatial dual-task group)as the independent variables.The dependent variables were wayfinding time and number of errors.The results showed that: as regard to wayfinding time,the main effect of experimental conditions was significant,and performance in dual-task groups was significantly deteriorated in comparison with the control group;the main effect of gender was also significant,and males travelled significantly faster than females;the interaction between gender and experiment conditions was significant,and according to the simple effect test,the difference between dual-task groups and control group mainly came from the females,while the male group was relatively not affected by the two kinds of secondary tasks.In terms of errors,the dual-task group made significantly higher errors than the control group,while the gender difference was not significant.Difference between the dual-task groups was also not found.In order to further explore the effect of dual-task conditions on males,a single factor between-subjects design was adopted in experiment 2 to test how the two dualtask conditions might affect male subjects' wayfinding behavior after the difficulty of the same secondary tasks increased.The results showed that the wayfinding time and the number of errors in both dual-task groups were significantly higher than those of the control group.There was no significant difference between the two types of dual tasks.Conclusions are drawn in this paper accordingly:(1)Phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad taxed by two secondary tasks played an equal role in the virtual maze wayfinding as regard to the interference with wayfinding time and number of errors.(2)The interference effects of secondary tasks revealed a gender difference,while males were prone to be affected by secondary tasks of higher difficulty.