ABSTRACT

Visual perception and saccadic eye-movements are more precise when directed at isoeccentric locations along the horizontal compared to vertical meridian. This effect is known as horizontal-vertical anisotropy (HVA). Given that the eye-movement system plays an important role in spatial short-term memory (STM) it was hypothesized that spatial STM would also show a horizontal-vertical anisotropy. Consistent with this hypothesis an online experiment revealed a significant HVA in spatial STM (Experiment 1). This effect persisted even when eye-movements were precluded by using very short display durations (Experiment 2). However, there was no HVA in a colour span or orientation change detection task. It is argued that the HVA in spatial STM may result from greater imprecision in the representation of spatial locations along the vertical meridian relative to the horizontal meridian in the spatial maps underpinning spatial STM, a bilateral field advantage, or some combination of these mechanisms.

摘要

与垂直子午线相比，当指​​向沿水平线的等偏心位置时，视觉感知和眼跳运动更加精确。这种效应称为水平-垂直各向异性 (HVA)。鉴于眼球运动系统在空间短期记忆 (STM) 中起着重要作用，因此假设空间 STM 也会显示出水平-垂直各向异性。与该假设一致，在线实验揭示了空间 STM 中的显着 HVA（实验 1）。即使通过使用非常短的显示持续时间（实验 2）排除了眼球运动，这种效果仍然存在。然而，在颜色跨度或方向变化检测任务中没有 HVA。