The role of phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad in virtual maze wayfinding

Abstract The role of phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad in wayfinding was tested in a virtual maze employing dual-task paradigm through two experiments. Experiment 1 was designed to detect the effects of experimental conditions (control/phonological dual-task/visuospatial dual-task group) and gender on wayfinding performance. The results showed that it took more time in dual-task groups than the control group to complete the primary task, and male participants travelled significantly faster than female participants. The differences between dual-task and control group mainly came from the female participants, while the male participants were relatively not affected by the secondary tasks. In order to further explore the effect of dual-task conditions on male participants, Experiment 2 was conducted to explore how the two dual-task conditions might affect male participants’ wayfinding as the difficulty of secondary tasks increased. It was found that wayfinding performance in dual-task groups was significantly deteriorated in comparison with the control group. There was also no significant difference between the two types of dual tasks. Our study demonstrated that both the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad mattered in wayfinding and to break the advantage in men required more challenging secondary tasks.