Verbal interference suppresses object-scene binding in visual long-term memory
Building a unified representation of an event requires binding object and scene information in visual long-term memory (VLTM). While previous studies have examined how humans remember individual objects and scenes, little is known about the mechanisms that support object-scene binding. In this study, we examined whether language plays a role in binding objects and scenes in VLTM. Participants studied a large number of object-scene pairs, either while performing no concurrent task, a concurrent verbal shadowing task, or a concurrent rhythmic shadowing task. Participants were then tested on their memory for the individual objects and scenes (entity memory) or their memory for which objects were displayed in which scenes (object-scene binding). We found that (1) the rhythmic load and verbal load impaired memory for objects and scenes to a similar extent, but (2) the verbal load impaired object-scene binding significantly more than the rhythmic load. Thus, suppressing verbal resources during encoding selectively disrupts object-scene binding in long-term memory. We conclude that language networks play an important role in object-scene binding in VLTM.