What would you expect if someone performed articulatory suppression while performing a visuospatial task?

• A. Little to no impairment on pure visuospatial tasks; a small effect may occur due to shared attentional resources, but verbal rehearsal is not central to visuospatial tasks.
• B. Visuospatial tasks are dramatically impaired due to interference with the phonological loop.
• C. The central executive becomes overwhelmed and stops processing.
• D. The episodic buffer is engaged to compensate for the suppression.

Answer: (A)

Articulatory suppression blocks subvocal rehearsal in the phonological loop, but a visuospatial task relies on the visuospatial sketchpad to hold and manipulate visual-spatial information. Because these components operate largely independently, pure visuospatial tasks don’t depend on verbal rehearsal, so performance should remain largely intact. There may be a small dip if shared attentional resources of the central executive come into play, but the core visuospatial processing isn’t disrupted by blocking the verbal loop. If the task required verbally labeling or encoding items, interference would be greater, but for a purely visuospatial task, the effect is minimal.