Effects of Background Television on Phonological and Visuo-Spatial Working Memory

Abstract

Research during the 1990s has demonstrated the potential of television-as-background to interfere with performance on concurrent cognitive processing tasks. An experiment examined hypothesized structural interference effects of background television on working memory. To assess effects on phonologically based working memory, participants were tested on their memory for lists of letters and digits. Background television caused stronger deleterious effects on the primacy component of verbal working memory. Participants were tested for effects on visuo-spatial working memory using the Brooks spatial sentence memory task. Where participants were left to choose their own strategy for performing the Brooks task, no significant influence of background television emerged. When participants were instructed in the specific memory technique to use in the Brooks visuo-spatial working memory task, background television had a significant negative effect on performance. However, stronger effects appeared when using a verbally based memory technique than a spatially based technique.