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If you’ve ever wondered how you manage to keep track of the immense amount of information that bombards you every day, you may have your location tagging system to thank.
A recent study from Murdoch University examined the Spatial Positional Association of Response Codes (SPoARC) effect to find out how the organization of our cognitive systems is influenced by the way we receive our information.
Professor Guillermo Campitelli, Vice-Chancellor for Health and Education at Murdoch University, said the new findings would have valuable implications for everyday life.
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“Understanding spatial positional associations can help develop strategies for presenting and disseminating information to the public for learning and teaching purposes,” said Professor Campitelli.
Hannah Fenwick, a PhD student and lead author at Murdoch University, said the focus of the study was on the arrangement and sequencing of information.
“As humans, we store and process enormous amounts of information in our brains. In order for us to make sense of this information, our brains need to organize it efficiently,” Ms Fenwick said.
“Studies on serial order in working memory have shown that participants from Western cultures respond faster to items presented at the beginning of a sequence with the left hand and faster to items at the end when presented with the right hand.
“This is known as the SPoARC effect and provides evidence that our brain spatially marks information in our memory system from left to right, corresponding to the reading and writing direction of our culture.
“Our study investigated spatial flexibility by testing the influence of the distance between elements displayed on a screen on the strength of the SPoARC effect.
“We hypothesized that by increasing the distance between elements on a screen, a greater spatial positional association of response codes could be found.
“We found that your brain always processes information in the same way, no matter how it is arranged on a screen or page.
“These findings add to the solid evidence for the SPoARC effect and deepen our understanding of how the human brain organizes information, which has significant implications for improving memory storage strategies and learning techniques.”
Reference: Fenwick H, Campitelli G, Guida A. Spatial organization in the human mind as a function of distance between stimuli. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2024:17470218241255690. doi: 10.1177/17470218241255690
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