Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The current study examined the role of working memory in language activation during visual processing. Twenty-sixnative English speakers searched for a visual target while completing a concurrent linguistic memory task, a concurrentspatial memory task, or in the absence of dual-task demands. Linguistic activation was measured by comparing visualfixations to phonologically-overlapping items and control items whose names did not overlap with the target. Participantsexperienced significant phonological competition across all conditions, but memory load impacted the timing of competitorco-activation (delayed and more sustained under spatial load), as well as the magnitude (attenuated under both spatial andlinguistic loads) compared to the no-load condition. We conclude that linguistic representations are accessed duringvisual search even with concurrent cognitive loads, but that working memory influences the degree of language-basedcompetition, possibly by modulating the activation and maintenance of linguistic and spatial information.