Visuospatial Bootstrapping: When Visuospatial and Verbal Memory Work Together

Visuospatial Bootstrapping is the name given to a phenomenon whereby performance on visually presented verbal serial recall tasks is better when stimuli are presented in a spatial array rather than a single location. However, the display used has to be a familiar one. This phenomenon implies communication between cognitive systems involved in storing short- term memory for verbal and visual information, alongside connections to and from knowledge held in long-term memory. Bootstrapping is a robust, replicable phenomenon that requires to be incorporated in theories of working memory and of how working memory interacts with long-term memory. This article provides an overview of bootstrapping, contextualises it within research on links between long-term knowledge and short-term memory, and addresses how it can help inform current working memory theory.