Visuospatial bootstrapping effect based on long-term music knowledge on working memory

The visuo-spatial bootstrapping effect is observed as an increase in working memory performance on tasks which allow people to make use of spatial long-term information, accessed through the episodic buffer component of the working memory. The Visuo-spatial Bootstrapping Effect is originally measured by using the typical numeric T9 phone keypad. That is, in a phone keypad condition, to-be remembered digits are presented one by one as highlighted keys on a keypad and the recall performance in the bootstrapping condition is compared with that in a learning condition with no keypad in which the digits are presented serially on a single location. The bootstrapping research results show that the keyboard display in the bootstrapping condition creates a spatial context which boosts encoding and memory for the digits to be remembered (Darling & Havelka, 2010; Darling et al., 2012; Darling et al., 2014; Calia et al., 2015; Allan et al., 2017). Unlike the studies in the literature, in the present study, the Visuo-spatial bootstrapping effect was studied in the context of the spatial knowledge of the guitar fretboard and musical knowledge. It was claimed that participants must have a long-term memory for the spatial layout to be used in the bootstrapping condition for a bootstrapping effect to occur. Thus, it is thought here that individuals who have musical knowledge of guitar and play guitar chords would benefit from the spatial knowledge of guitar fretboard when they are asked to learn visual patterns on guitar chord charts. Each chord is represented by a letter from the musical alphabet with 7 notes, A-G, and each has a spatially specific representation on the instrument. Memory performance of participants who were guitar players was compared with that of participants who had no experience with any musical instruments on the guitar-chords version of visual-spatial bootstrapping task, designed by the present researcher to investigate the effects of longterm musical knowledge. In the current study, two secondary tasks which make selective demands on either visuo-spatial sketchpad or phonological loop components of working memory were also employed to examine the bootstrapping effect on memory under different suppression conditions: articulatory suppression, spatial suppression, and no suppression. In the suppression conditions where the secondary tasks were performed, the participant with and without guitar-playing experience exhibited poorer performance than in the no suppression condition. The results also showed that the memory performance was differentially affected by suppression depending on the type of secondary tasks used. The performance was affected more by the spatial secondary task than by the verbal secondary task. In the present study the participants, aged 20-30 years, performed a complex working memory task and the Guitar Chords Version of the Visual-Spatial Bootstrapping Task. In addition, a chord knowledge questionnaire, a demographic information form and Chord Shapes Evaluation Scale were also prepared by the experimenter to collect more data from the participants. It was observed that the participants with guitar-playing experience had better performance on the task, thanks to the spatial musical knowledge, compared to the participants with no guitar experience. This indicates that the Bootstrapping effect extends beyond the T9 typical digit keyboard, and that specialized knowledge of spatial guitar fretboard can influence the working memory performance. In addition, a primacy effect was found in recall performance of the participants with no guitar experience. That is, the first position was recalled significantly more than the other positions. However, no primacy effect was observed in performance of the participants with guitar-playing experience. There was no recency effect in the results for both groups. It was found that the participants were able to retrieve items presented at the beginning of study sessions significantly more easily if they do not have expertise in that manner. The levels of chord knowledge among the participants with guitar-playing experience were assessed and the effect of chord knowledge levels on performance was also investigated in the present study. The results revealed that the participants with high chord knowledge level had a better performance than those with lower knowledge level on the Visual-spatial Bootstrapping Task. Keywords: Working Memory, Visual-spatial Bootstrapping Effect, Long-Term Working Memory, Articulatory Suppression, Spatial Suppression, Primacy Effect, Recency Effect