LP3C, Université Rennes, France.
Qatar University, Qatar.
Cognition. 2018 Jun;175:96-100. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.02.013. Epub 2018 Feb 24.
The ability to maintain arbitrary sequences of items in the mind contributes to major cognitive faculties, such as language, reasoning, and episodic memory. Previous research suggests that serial order working memory is grounded in the brain's spatial attention system. In the present study, we show that the spatially defined mental organization of novel item sequences is related to literacy and varies as a function of reading/writing direction. Specifically, three groups (left-to-right Western readers, right-to-left Arabic readers, and Arabic-speaking illiterates) were asked to memorize random (and non-spatial) sequences of color patches and determine whether a subsequent probe was part of the memorized sequence (e.g., press left key) or not (e.g., press right key). The results showed that Western readers mentally organized the sequences from left to right, Arabic readers spontaneously used the opposite direction, and Arabic-speaking illiterates showed no systematic spatial organization. This finding suggests that cultural conventions shape one of the most "fluid" aspects of human cognition, namely, the spontaneous mental organization of novel non-spatial information.
在大脑中保持任意项目序列的能力有助于主要的认知能力，如语言、推理和情景记忆。先前的研究表明，序列工作记忆是基于大脑的空间注意力系统的。在本研究中，我们表明，新颖项目序列的空间定义的心理组织与读写能力有关，并随阅读/写作方向的变化而变化。具体来说，我们要求三组人（从左到右的西方读者、从右到左的阿拉伯读者和阿拉伯语文盲）记忆随机（和非空间的）颜色斑块序列，并确定后续的探测是否是记忆序列的一部分（例如，按左键）或不是（例如，按右键）。结果表明，西方读者从左到右地组织序列，阿拉伯读者自发地使用相反的方向，而阿拉伯语文盲则没有系统的空间组织。这一发现表明，文化习俗塑造了人类认知最“灵活”的方面之一，即对新颖非空间信息的自发心理组织。
