Action-Based Language Gestalts in Working Memory

While evidence is mounting that perceptual grouping cues bene t working memory performance, it is debatable whether this is the main purpose of Gestalt formation. Indeed, recent ndings by Dumitru and colleagues demonstrate that people build language Gestalts that encode basic action patterns when reasoning with the connectives ‘and’ and ‘or’. Here we present novel evidence from dual memory tasks that Gestalt formation and maintenance breaks down under high working memory load for two age groups (18 to 30 year olds and 60 to 80 year olds). More importantly, the number of Gestalts evoked by the connectives (one for conjunction and two for disjunction) as well as the age-speci c performance levels with visual Gestalts predict the observed e ects. Well-established mappings between language and action patterns are thus a driving factor
of Gestalt building and management in working memory.