Abstract
Fujiki & Hishitani (2010) have argued that eye movements are involved in the rehearsal of spatial information that is visually encoded, but limb movements are not. However, previous studies have yet to elucidate whether spatial informations is rehearsed by both limb and eye movements or only by limb movements when such information is kinesthetically encoded. In the present study, we conducted two experiments that used a spatial memory task to memorize the direction of finger movements. The first experiment found that irrelevant limb movements interfered with spatial memory, but irrelevant eye movements did not. The second experiment showed that only relevant limb movements caused a facilitation effect on spatial memory under a 10-second delay condition. The findings from these experiments suggest that limb movements are involved in the rehearsal of spatial information that is kinesthetically encoded, but eye movements are not.
