The Role of Spatial Attention in Tactile Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory (STM) encompasses cognitive functions for the storage, maintenance, and mental manipulation of information that is no longer present in the sensory environment. Selective attention, on the other hand, relates to functions that modulate the processing of sensory events during encoding. We review evidence from a series of three tactile memory experiments using electroencephalography and discuss our observations in the context of research on tactile perceptual attention and visual STM. Striking similarities across the domains of STM and perception indicate that the central executive system for tactile STM relies on control mechanisms that accomplish attentional selection during somatosensory encoding. Our findings support the view that STM emerges when attention is directed to the representation of sensory signals stored in modality-specific brain areas.