ABSTRACT
When we interact with the world, the ability to maintain some form of mental representation of our environment is crucial. If you were now to close your eyes and attempt to reach out and pick up small objects nearby, you would have little difficulty in doing so. This strongly suggests that our interaction with objects in the environment does not necessarily require visual input for successful interaction. It also suggests that we can mentally represent fairly accurately the location as well as the identity of objects in our immediate environment. This ability to represent visual and spatial aspects of our surroundings has been widely studied within the working memory framework and there is now converging evidence for a distinction between a visual temporary store and a spatial/movement-based system. We will discuss some of the evidence for this distinction before looking at the spatial/movement-based system in more detail. This system appears to be involved in the planning and execution of physical movement, as well as the mental representation of paths between objects in the environment.
