I am not sure that it is exactly what are you looking for, or if any study specifically addressed this issue (reading & visual spatial memory) but there a couple of articles that come to my mind and might be relevant. Hope this helps.

Brooks, L. R. (1967). The suppression of visualization by reading. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 19(4), 289–99. doi:10.1080/14640746708400105

Brooks, L. R. (1970). An extension of the conflict between visualization and reading. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 22(2), 91–96. doi:10.1080/00335557043000014

See also EMDR and working memory hypothesis (Gunter & Bodner, 2008)

THIS IS A GREAT QUESTION; I AGREE WITH DR. LISI, IN THAT I NEVER SAW ANY SPECIFIC STUDY THAT SYSTEMATICALLY INVESTIGATED THE TOPIC; AND, IT'S A TRICKY TOPIC EVEN THOUGH IT MIGHT SOUND DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE. EYE MOVEMENT IS CLEARLY RELATED TO THOUGHT, INCLUDING IMAGERY; AND, INHERENT IN READING IS CONTROL OVER THE FRONTAL EYE FIELDS; FOR EXAMPLE, LACK OF INHIBITION OVER SACCADIC EYE MOVEMENTS, EITHER AS A MANIFESTATION OF NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS OR DISEASE PROCESSES, CAN GENERATE THE EXPERIENCE OF WORDS "JUMPING ACROSS THE PAGE." IT CAN ALSO HAVE A MORE SUBTLE MANIFESTATION AS RELATED TO ASPECTS OF READING FLUENCY. I WOULD ALSO "ASSUME" THAT SINCE LEARNING TO READ IS INDEED A NOVEL TASK, REQUIRING THE "WORKING MEMORY" OF COGNITIVE CONTROL BEFORE THE PROCESS BECOMES MORE AND MORE AUTOMATIC, THE ACTIVATION OF PRESUMABLY RIGHT-HEMISPHERE GOVERNED "WM" MIGHT FOLLOW A DEVELOPMENTAL TRAJECTORY, WHICH TO MY KNOWLEDGE, ALSO HAS NOT BEEN SYSTEMATICALLY INVESTIGATED, ALTHOUGH I ADMIT I HAVEN'T GIVEN THE TOPIC A CLOSE LOOK. I RECALL A STUDY FROM THE LATE 1980'S THAT SPECIFICALLY CONCLUDED AN INITIAL RIGHT HEMISPHERE DOMINANT ACTIVATION IN LEARNING TO READ RESULTED IN A SLOWLY DEVELOPING "SHIFT" TO LEFT HEMISPHERE ACTIVATION IN THE GROUP IDENTIFIED AS THE "BEST" READERS - I CAN EVENTUALLY FIND IT, IF NECESSARY. IT IS ALSO MISLEADING TO ATTRIBUTE A FIXED HEMISPHERIC ASSIGNMENT OF LANGUAGE-RELATED FUNCTIONS, INCLUDING READING, TO THE LEFT HEMISPHERE. INVESTIGATIONS OF BRAIN ACTIVATION REGIONS DURING THE COURSE OF WORD LIST LEARNING REVEAL THE BEST LEARNERS ON THESE TASKS ARE THOSE SUBJECTS WHO DEMONSTRATE HIGH LEVELS OF RIGHT HEMISPHERE RECRUITMENT, ESPECIALLY IN ANTERIOR REGIONS. THE INITIAL IMMEDIATE RECALL TRIAL ACTIVATES THE RIGHT HEMESPHERE, AS WELL AS THE LEFT, AND NEW, NOVEL OR UNFAMILIAR WORDS RECRUIT RIGHT HEMISPHERE FRONTAL LOBES. WHEN WE ADD THE FACT THAT WORDS IMPLICITLY EVOKE IMAGES, DEPENDENT UPON WORD CONTENT, WHILE MANY "MEMORIES" OR MEANINGS OF WORDS WHICH ARE "STORED" OR RETAINED IN ASPECTS OF BOTH LOCALIZED AND DISTRIBUTED BRAIN NETWORKS, UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EYE MOVEMENTS AND "VISUAL-SPATIAL" WORKING MEMORY IN READING STARTS TO GET JUST A LITTLE BIT COMPLICATED. AND, IT GETS EVEN WORSE, SINCE WHEN MOST PEOPLE SPEAK OF "WM," THEY ARE REFERRING TO BLATANTLY EXPLICIT PROCESSES, WITH RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN FRONTAL-PARIETAL CORTICES; COGNITIVE SCIENCE LOOKS AT "WM" A BIT DIFFERENTLY, AS I DO; FOR EXAMPLE, THE PURPOSE OF "WM" IS TO GUIDE PURPOSEFUL, GOAL DIRECTED BEHAVIOR. WHILE THIS IMPLIES MEANING/IDEATION/COMPREHENSION -ACTION(ANTERIOR) LINKAGES; AND THIS HELPS EXPLAIN WHY VENTRAL REGIONS OF FRONTAL CORTICES, INCLUDING VENTRAL REGIONS OF "BROCA'S AREA" ARE RECRUITED ON A WIDE RANGE OF "WM" TASKS; SO, THIS IS WAY MORE THAN YOU EVER ASKED FOR IN YOUR QUESTION, BUT AS MY IMAGINATION STARTS TO GRAPPLE WITH YOUR QUESTION IN CONSIDERATION OF VIEWING COGNITION, INCLUDING LANGUAGE EXPRESSION, LEARNING TO READ, "WM," AND COMPREHENSION ISSUES IN AN INTEGRATED WAY, ALL I HAVE DONE HERE IS BLURR THE BOUNDARIES AND CLOUD THE ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTION. NOTE: LARGE FONT IS FOR VISION ON MY END; NO EMPHASIS INTENDED. - LK

I am not sure if any study specifically addressed this issue (reading & visual spatial memory), but there a couple of articles that come to my mind and might be relevant. Hope this helps.

Kropotov J.D. (2009). Quantitative EEG, event related potentials and neurotherapy. San Diego: Academic Press, Elsevier.

Pąchalska M., Kropotov I.D., Mańko G., Lipowska M., Rasmus A, Łukaszewska B., Bogdanowicz M., Mirski A. (2012) Evaluation of a neurotherapy program for a child with ADHD with Benign Partial Epilepsy with Rolandic Spikes (BPERS) using event-related potentials. Medical Science Monitor. 2012;18(11):CS 94-104.

Pachalska M., Mańko G., Kropotov I.D., Mirski A., Łukowicz M., Jedwabińska A.,Talar J. Evaluation of neurotherapy for a patient with chronic impaired self-awareness and secondary ADHD after severe TBI and long term coma using Event Related Potentials. Acta Neuropsychologica 2012;10(3):399-417.

Lipowska M. Graphomotor functions in ADHD – motor or planning deficit? A microgenetic approach. Acta Neuropsychologica 2012;10(1):69-80.

Matteo, Catherine, Leonard and Maria. Thank for your fantastic answers. Any more ideas are more than welcomed. Please, post it or email me ([email protected]).

I appologize for taking too long to give you this feedback:

1) Matteo, the article you mentioned, The Supression of visualization by reading is actually one of the articles that led me to this investigation. I bought this article one year ago. I know about this other article by Brooks, " An extension of the conflict between visualization and reading" but I do not have it. Do you have it? Can you send it to me?

If eye reading movements loads SPATIAL memory and if text with spatial contents also load the spatial memory (they might do that as they induce "SPATIAL mental images"), than the supression of imagination of mental images by eye reading movements would only happen with spatial text, not with visual text. 

  2) Catherine, thank you for your suggestion of the article

"How eye movements affect unpleasant memories:Support for a working-memory account". I read the abstract and I very interested in it. Can you send me a copy of it?

3) Leonard thank you for your fantastic answer. You gave me a lot of food for thought related with your deep and clear thoughts. You mentioned "words implicitly evoke images dependent upon word content". Well , I am particularly interested in this interference between the text contents (visual or spatial) and eye movement during reading. But I am also interested in all you mentioned regarding viweing cognition, language expression and learning to read, WM and comprehension issues. I really would appreciate send me that study from the late 1980's that specifically concluded that an initial right hemisphere dominant activation in learning to read resulted in a slowly developing shift to the left hemisphere activation in the group identified as best readers." Thank you for sharing your deep knowledge.

4) Dear MariaI was very impressed with your recommendations and I am particularly impressed with your article which I am still reading. I would appreciate if you could send me the other papers.

Thank you to all of you my friends (Matteo, Catherine, Leonard and Maria). Let us keep in touch.

THE PAPER YOU REQUESTED WAS NEVER IN PDF FORMAT, AND THE BOOK MIGHT BE OUT OF PRINT.

HEMISPHERIC SPECIALIZATION AND SPECIFIC READING RETARDATION, BY DIRK J. BAKKER, 1983. IN MICHAEL RUTTER (ED) "DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY," GUILFORD PRESS, NY; PP.498-506; AN "OLDIE," BUT NONETHELESS, A "GOODIE."  IF UNABLE TO LOCATE, CONTACT ME; I WILL DUPLICATE, COPY TO PDF, AND FORWARD; HOWEVER, THIS MIGHT TAKE A WEEK OR SO TO ACCOMPLISH. - LK

Dear Leonard

I appreciate that you took the time to find that information. I will try to find it and if I cant find it I will ask you to duplicate your copy. Thank you very much my friend.

NC

Hi Nelson,

I don't know if it's related to what you are looking for but Alan Kennedy from Dundee - Scotland, published few articles on spatial coding of text:

Kennedy, A. (1983). On looking into space. In K. Rayner (Ed.) Eye movements in Reading: Perceptual and Language Processes. New York: Academic Press.

Kennedy, A. (1982). Eye movements and spatial coding in reading. Psychological Research, 44, 313-322.

Kennedy, A. (1986). The case for place: Text arrangement and reading skill - Invited Tutorial Review. Current Psychological Research and Reviews. 5, 94-104.

Kennedy, A. and Murray, W.S. (1987). Spatial Coding and reading: some comments on Monk (1985). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39A, 649-718.

Murray, W.S. and Kennedy, A. (1988). Spatial Coding and the processing of anaphor by good and poor readers: Evidence from eye movement analyses. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 693-718.

Sebastien I appreciated your precious recommendations. I will try to get all of them and read it as soon as possible. Then I will ask you for more advices, for sure. Thank you!

No, sorry, I don't have the pdf of that one ("An extension of the conflict between visualization and reading") and I don't have access to it with the subscription of my actual institution.. 

 I also don t have acess to it with the subscription of my actual institution.

Thank you Matteo!!!!!!!!!

Dear Nelson,

if you send me your e-mail address ([email protected]), I will dend you some papers on this issue.

Regards

JZ

Thank you very much Josef!

I think - no

Hi Yog

Why do you think so?

Expert and non-expert readers, could they be different?

Could expert readers need less spatial memory?

Very interesting question. What is your opinion about it?

This is a non-elaborated suspicion: Expert reading and one type of inner speech could share a resource.

The issue that I am currently working in is inner speech. 

(Two types of inner speech: 1) expressive type; 2) inner speech for self-regulation of attention. In 1) silence must be got by costly inhibition; in 2) silence is really an energy saving resource)

In inner speech (or rather, in my view, in the inner speech for self-regulation of attention), as Oppenheim & Del ( 2008, p. 534) found, "slips exhibit lexical bias" (where the unity of the word is the key), "but not the phonemic similarity effect" (where the sequence of motor steps is the key). This particularity could have to do with a facilitation and enhancement of working-memory. (This enhancement would explain that –even when are on our own and we do not need to, therefore, defend the privacy of our thoughts–we adults prefer thinking in inner speech and not out loud.)

It is that resource (i.e. the focus on the semantic unity and not on the articulatory-phonetic sequence) that might perhaps be shared by expert– silent, quick– reading.

But that suspicion is too vague and unfounded. Thus, I want to replace it with this humble, trivial recommendation: With regard to their needs of memory, do not assume that expert and non-expert reading will be one and the same thing.