DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN SPATIAL AND OBJECT-BASED WORKING MEMORY USING COMPLEX STIMULI: AN ERP STUDY

Event-related potential studies using simple low-level stimuli have associated early visual-spatial processing with P1 amplitude, and early visual object-based processing with N2 amplitude. Other studies have linked later spatial processing and spatial working memory with posterior slow wave activity. Using complex real world representations in a matched object and spatial processing task, P1 was found to reflect spatially based information, and N2 was found to reflect object-based information. Furthermore, object-based working memory was associated with larger slow wave amplitude compared with spatial working memory, raising the possibility that spatial and object-based working memory utilize common processing resources.