04. December 2018 : The world as an external memory?

New publication supporting the „the-world-as-an-external-memory“ postulation: memorization in a sensorimotor task seems less efficient than a visual check:

Melnik A, Schüler F, Rothkopf CA and König P (2018).
The world as an external memory: The price of saccades in a sensorimotor task. DOI:10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00253. Front Behav Neurosci 12:253

Theories of embodied cognition postulate that the world can serve as an external memory. This implies that instead of storing visual information in working memory, the information may be equally retrieved by appropriate eye movements. We designed this study to quantify the trade-off between the use of working-memory and eye movements during purposeful actions. Our results supported the view that postulated the world as an external memory.