Working Memory Capacity and Mental Rotation: Evidence for a Domain-General View

Despite the existence of numerous studies that examined the relationship between working memory capacity and performance in complex cognitive tasks, it remains unclear whether this capacity is domain specific or domain general. In addition, the available empirical evidence is somewhat contradictory. In this work we have studied the role of verbal working memory capacity in a non-verbal task – mental image rotation. If this capacity were domain specific it would be expected that high and low verbal span participants would obtain similar results in the mental rotation task. We have found that this is not the case as the high span participants performed better in terms of both speed and accuracy. Moreover, these differences depended on the processing component of the mental rotation task: the higher the processing requirements the higher the differences as a function of the working memory capacity. Therefore, the evidence presented here supports the domain general hypothesis.