Sample records for assessing working memory
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Injoque-Ricle, Irene; Calero, Alejandra D.; Alloway, Tracy P.; Burin, Debora I.
2011-01-01
The Automated Working Memory Assessment battery was designed to assess verbal and visuospatial passive and active working memory processing in children and adolescents. The aim of this paper is to present the adaptation and validation of the AWMA battery to Argentinean Spanish-speaking children aged 6 to 11 years. Verbal subtests were adapted and…
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Working Memory: A Selective Review.
Kent, Phillip L
2016-01-01
The purpose of this paper is to provide a selective overview of the evolution of the concept and assessment of working memory, and how its assessment has been confused with the assessment of some components of attention. A literature search using PsychNet Gold was conducted using the terms working memory. In addition, the writer reviewed recommendations from a sampling of recent neuropsychology texts in regard to the assessment of attention and working memory, as well as the two most recent editions of the Wechsler Memory Scale. It is argued that many clinicians have an incomplete understanding of the relationship between attention and working memory, and often conflate the two in assessment and treatment. Suggestions were made for assessing these abilities.
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Cabbage, Kathryn; Brinkley, Shara; Gray, Shelley; Alt, Mary; Cowan, Nelson; Green, Samuel; Kuo, Trudy; Hogan, Tiffany P
2017-06-12
The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children - Working Memory (CABC-WM) is a computer-based battery designed to assess different components of working memory in young school-age children. Working memory deficits have been identified in children with language-based learning disabilities, including dyslexia 1 , 2 and language impairment 3 , 4 , but it is not clear whether these children exhibit deficits in subcomponents of working memory, such as visuospatial or phonological working memory. The CABC-WM is administered on a desktop computer with a touchscreen interface and was specifically developed to be engaging and motivating for children. Although the long-term goal of the CABC-WM is to provide individualized working memory profiles in children, the present study focuses on the initial success and utility of the CABC-WM for measuring central executive, visuospatial, phonological loop, and binding constructs in children with typical development. Immediate next steps are to administer the CABC-WM to children with specific language impairment, dyslexia, and comorbid specific language impairment and dyslexia.
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Hill, B D; Elliott, Emily M; Shelton, Jill T; Pella, Russell D; O'Jile, Judith R; Gouvier, W Drew
2010-03-01
Working memory is the cognitive ability to hold a discrete amount of information in mind in an accessible state for utilization in mental tasks. This cognitive ability is impaired in many clinical populations typically assessed by clinical neuropsychologists. Recently, there have been a number of theoretical shifts in the way that working memory is conceptualized and assessed in the experimental literature. This study sought to determine to what extent the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III) Working Memory Index (WMI) measures the construct studied in the cognitive working memory literature, whether an improved WMI could be derived from the subtests that comprise the WAIS-III, and what percentage of variance in individual WAIS-III subtests is explained by working memory. It was hypothesized that subtests beyond those currently used to form the WAIS-III WMI would be able to account for a greater percentage of variance in a working memory criterion construct than the current WMI. Multiple regression analyses (n = 180) revealed that the best predictor model of subtests for assessing working memory was composed of the Digit Span, Letter-Number Sequencing, Matrix Reasoning, and Vocabulary. The Arithmetic subtest was not a significant contributor to the model. These results are discussed in the context of how they relate to Unsworth and Engle's (2006, 2007) new conceptualization of working memory mechanisms.
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Salis, Christos; Kelly, Helen; Code, Chris
2015-01-01
Aphasia following stroke refers to impairments that affect the comprehension and expression of spoken and/or written language, and co-occurring cognitive deficits are common. In this paper we focus on short-term and working memory impairments that impact on the ability to retain and manipulate auditory-verbal information. Evidence from diverse paradigms (large group studies, case studies) report close links between short-term/working memory and language functioning in aphasia. This evidence leads to the hypothesis that treating such memory impairments would improve language functioning. This link has only recently been acknowledged in aphasia treatment but has not been embraced widely by clinicians. To examine the association between language, and short-term and working memory impairments in aphasia. To describe practical ways of assessing short-term and working memory functioning that could be used in clinical practice. To discuss and critically appraise treatments of short-term and working memory reported in the literature. Taking a translational research approach, this paper provides clinicians with current evidence from the literature and practical information on how to assess and treat short-term and working memory impairments in people with aphasia. Published treatments of short-term and/or working memory in post-stroke aphasia are discussed through a narrative review. This paper provides the following. A theoretical rationale for adopting short-term and working memory treatments in aphasia. It highlights issues in differentially diagnosing between short-term, working memory disorders and other concomitant impairments, e.g. apraxia of speech. It describes short-term and working memory assessments with practical considerations for use with people with aphasia. It also offers a description of published treatments in terms of participants, treatments and outcomes. Finally, it critically appraises the current evidence base relating to the treatment of short-term and working memory treatments. The links between short-term/working memory functioning and language in aphasia are generally acknowledged. These strongly indicate the need to incorporate assessment of short-term/working memory functioning for people with aphasia. While the supportive evidence for treatment is growing and appears to highlight the benefits of including short-term/working memory in aphasia treatment, the quality of the evidence in its current state is poor. However, because of the clinical needs of people with aphasia and the prevalence of short-term/working memory impairments, incorporating related treatments through practice-based evidence is advocated. © 2015 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
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Short-term and working memory impairments in aphasia.
Potagas, Constantin; Kasselimis, Dimitrios; Evdokimidis, Ioannis
2011-08-01
The aim of the present study is to investigate short-term memory and working memory deficits in aphasics in relation to the severity of their language impairment. Fifty-eight aphasic patients participated in this study. Based on language assessment, an aphasia score was calculated for each patient. Memory was assessed in two modalities, verbal and spatial. Mean scores for all memory tasks were lower than normal. Aphasia score was significantly correlated with performance on all memory tasks. Correlation coefficients for short-term memory and working memory were approximately of the same magnitude. According to our findings, severity of aphasia is related with both verbal and spatial memory deficits. Moreover, while aphasia score correlated with lower scores in both short-term memory and working memory tasks, the lack of substantial difference between corresponding correlation coefficients suggests a possible primary deficit in information retention rather than impairment in working memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
St Clair-Thompson, Helen
2014-01-01
The aim of the present study was to investigate the reliability and validity of a brief standardized assessment of children's working memory; "Lucid Recall." Although there are many established assessments of working memory, "Lucid Recall" is fully automated and can therefore be administered in a group setting. It is therefore…
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Working Memory and Reasoning: The Processing Loads Imposed by Analogies.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Halford, Graeme S.
The proposals concerning working memory outlined in this paper involve the architecture of working memory, the reasoning mechanisms that draw on it, and the ways in which working memory may develop with age. Ways of assessing task demands and children's working memory capacities are also considered. It is noted that there is long-standing evidence…
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Bharadwaj, Sneha V; Maricle, Denise; Green, Laura; Allman, Tamby
2015-10-01
The objective of the study was to examine short-term memory and working memory through both visual and auditory tasks in school-age children with cochlear implants. The relationship between the performance on these cognitive skills and reading as well as language outcomes were examined in these children. Ten children between the ages of 7 and 11 years with early-onset bilateral severe-profound hearing loss participated in the study. Auditory and visual short-term memory, auditory and visual working memory subtests and verbal knowledge measures were assessed using the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV Integrated and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children II. Reading outcomes were assessed using the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test III. Performance on visual short-term memory and visual working memory measures in children with cochlear implants was within the average range when compared to the normative mean. However, auditory short-term memory and auditory working memory measures were below average when compared to the normative mean. Performance was also below average on all verbal knowledge measures. Regarding reading outcomes, children with cochlear implants scored below average for listening and passage comprehension tasks and these measures were positively correlated to visual short-term memory, visual working memory and auditory short-term memory. Performance on auditory working memory subtests was not related to reading or language outcomes. The children with cochlear implants in this study demonstrated better performance in visual (spatial) working memory and short-term memory skills than in auditory working memory and auditory short-term memory skills. Significant positive relationships were found between visual working memory and reading outcomes. The results of the study provide support for the idea that WM capacity is modality specific in children with hearing loss. Based on these findings, reading instruction that capitalizes on the strengths in visual short-term memory and working memory is suggested for young children with early-onset hearing loss. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Hotton, Matthew; Derakshan, Nazanin; Fox, Elaine
2018-01-01
The process of worry has been associated with reductions in working memory capacity and availability of resources necessary for efficient attentional control. This, in turn, can lead to escalating worry. Recent investigations into working memory training have shown improvements in attentional control and cognitive performance in high trait-anxious individuals and individuals with sub-clinical depression. The current randomised controlled trial investigated the effects of 15 days of adaptive n-back working memory training, or an active control task, on working memory capacity, attentional control and worry in a sample of high worriers. Pre-training, post-training and one-month follow-up measures of working memory capacity were assessed using a Change Detection task, while a Flanker task was used to assess attentional control. A breathing focus task was used as a behavioural measure of worry in addition to a number of self-report assessments of worry and anxiety. Overall there was no difference between the active training and the active control condition with both groups demonstrating similar improvements in working memory capacity and worry, post-training and at follow-up. However, training-related improvements on the n-back task were associated with gains in working memory capacity and reductions in worry symptoms in the active training condition. These results highlight the need for further research investigating the role of individual differences in working memory training. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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Assessing working memory and language comprehension in Alzheimer's disease.
MacDonald, M C; Almor, A; Henderson, V W; Kempler, D; Andersen, E S
2001-07-01
Studies of language impairments in patients with Alzheimer's disease have often assumed that impairments in linguistic working memory underlie comprehension deficits. Assessment of this hypothesis has been hindered both by vagueness of key terms such as "working memory" and by limitations of available working memory tasks, in that many such tasks either seem to have little relationship to language comprehension or are too confusing or difficult for Alzheimer's patients. Four experiments investigated the usefulness of digit ordering, a new task assessing linguistic working memory and/or language processing skill, in normal adults and patients with probable Alzheimer's disease. The digit ordering task was shown to be strongly correlated with the degree of dementia in Alzheimer's patients. The task correlated with measures of language processing on which patients and normal controls performed differently. The results are interpreted as indicating that linguistic representations, linguistic processing, and linguistic working memory are intertwined, such that a deficit of one (e.g., working memory) cannot be said to "cause" a deficit in the other. The implications of this approach are explored in terms of task demands in comprehension and memory measures, and interpretation of previous results in the literature. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.
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Diwadkar, Vaibhav A; Goradia, Dhruman; Hosanagar, Avinash; Mermon, Diana; Montrose, Debra M; Birmaher, Boris; Axelson, David; Rajarathinem, R; Haddad, Luay; Amirsadri, Ali; Zajac-Benitez, Caroline; Rajan, Usha; Keshavan, Matcheri S
2011-07-01
Working memory deficits abound in schizophrenia and attention deficits have been documented in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Adolescent offspring of patients may inherit vulnerabilities in brain circuits that subserve these cognitive domains. Here we assess impairments in offspring of schizophrenia (SCZ-Offspring) or bipolar (BP-Offspring) patients compared to controls (HC) with no family history of mood or psychotic disorders to the second degree. Three groups (n=100 subjects; range: 10-20 yrs) of HC, SCZ-Offspring and BP-Offspring gave informed consent. Working memory was assessed using a delayed spatial memory paradigm with two levels of delay (2s & 12s); sustained attention processing was assessed using the Continuous Performance Task-Identical Pairs version. SCZ-Offspring (but not BP-Offspring) showed impairments in working memory (relative to HC) at the longer memory delay indicating a unique deficit. Both groups showed reduced sensitivity during attention but only BP-Offspring significantly differed from controls. These results suggest unique (working memory/dorsal frontal cortex) and potentially overlapping (attention/fronto-striatal cortex) vulnerability pathways in adolescent offspring of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Working memory and attention assessments in these offspring may assist in the clinical characterization of the adolescents vulnerable to SCZ or BP. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Working Memory Training and Speech in Noise Comprehension in Older Adults.
Wayne, Rachel V; Hamilton, Cheryl; Jones Huyck, Julia; Johnsrude, Ingrid S
2016-01-01
Understanding speech in the presence of background sound can be challenging for older adults. Speech comprehension in noise appears to depend on working memory and executive-control processes (e.g., Heald and Nusbaum, 2014), and their augmentation through training may have rehabilitative potential for age-related hearing loss. We examined the efficacy of adaptive working-memory training (Cogmed; Klingberg et al., 2002) in 24 older adults, assessing generalization to other working-memory tasks (near-transfer) and to other cognitive domains (far-transfer) using a cognitive test battery, including the Reading Span test, sensitive to working memory (e.g., Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). We also assessed far transfer to speech-in-noise performance, including a closed-set sentence task (Kidd et al., 2008). To examine the effect of cognitive training on benefit obtained from semantic context, we also assessed transfer to open-set sentences; half were semantically coherent (high-context) and half were semantically anomalous (low-context). Subjects completed 25 sessions (0.5-1 h each; 5 sessions/week) of both adaptive working memory training and placebo training over 10 weeks in a crossover design. Subjects' scores on the adaptive working-memory training tasks improved as a result of training. However, training did not transfer to other working memory tasks, nor to tasks recruiting other cognitive domains. We did not observe any training-related improvement in speech-in-noise performance. Measures of working memory correlated with the intelligibility of low-context, but not high-context, sentences, suggesting that sentence context may reduce the load on working memory. The Reading Span test significantly correlated only with a test of visual episodic memory, suggesting that the Reading Span test is not a pure-test of working memory, as is commonly assumed.
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Working Memory Training and Speech in Noise Comprehension in Older Adults
Wayne, Rachel V.; Hamilton, Cheryl; Jones Huyck, Julia; Johnsrude, Ingrid S.
2016-01-01
Understanding speech in the presence of background sound can be challenging for older adults. Speech comprehension in noise appears to depend on working memory and executive-control processes (e.g., Heald and Nusbaum, 2014), and their augmentation through training may have rehabilitative potential for age-related hearing loss. We examined the efficacy of adaptive working-memory training (Cogmed; Klingberg et al., 2002) in 24 older adults, assessing generalization to other working-memory tasks (near-transfer) and to other cognitive domains (far-transfer) using a cognitive test battery, including the Reading Span test, sensitive to working memory (e.g., Daneman and Carpenter, 1980). We also assessed far transfer to speech-in-noise performance, including a closed-set sentence task (Kidd et al., 2008). To examine the effect of cognitive training on benefit obtained from semantic context, we also assessed transfer to open-set sentences; half were semantically coherent (high-context) and half were semantically anomalous (low-context). Subjects completed 25 sessions (0.5–1 h each; 5 sessions/week) of both adaptive working memory training and placebo training over 10 weeks in a crossover design. Subjects' scores on the adaptive working-memory training tasks improved as a result of training. However, training did not transfer to other working memory tasks, nor to tasks recruiting other cognitive domains. We did not observe any training-related improvement in speech-in-noise performance. Measures of working memory correlated with the intelligibility of low-context, but not high-context, sentences, suggesting that sentence context may reduce the load on working memory. The Reading Span test significantly correlated only with a test of visual episodic memory, suggesting that the Reading Span test is not a pure-test of working memory, as is commonly assumed. PMID:27047370
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Owens, Matthew; Stevenson, Jim; Norgate, Roger; Hadwin, Julie A
2008-10-01
Working memory skills are positively associated with academic performance. In contrast, high levels of trait anxiety are linked with educational underachievement. Based on Eysenck and Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory (PET), the present study investigated whether associations between anxiety and educational achievement were mediated via poor working memory performance. Fifty children aged 11-12 years completed verbal (backwards digit span; tapping the phonological store/central executive) and spatial (Corsi blocks; tapping the visuospatial sketchpad/central executive) working memory tasks. Trait anxiety was measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Academic performance was assessed using school administered tests of reasoning (Cognitive Abilities Test) and attainment (Standard Assessment Tests). The results showed that the association between trait anxiety and academic performance was significantly mediated by verbal working memory for three of the six academic performance measures (math, quantitative and non-verbal reasoning). Spatial working memory did not significantly mediate the relationship between trait anxiety and academic performance. On average verbal working memory accounted for 51% of the association between trait anxiety and academic performance, while spatial working memory only accounted for 9%. The findings indicate that PET is a useful framework to assess the impact of children's anxiety on educational achievement.
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Shields, Grant S; Doty, Dominique; Shields, Rebecca H; Gower, Garrett; Slavich, George M; Yonelinas, Andrew P
2017-11-01
Although substantial research has examined the effects of stress on cognition, much of this research has focused on acute stress (e.g. manipulated in the laboratory) or chronic stress (e.g. persistent interpersonal or financial difficulties). In contrast, the effects of recent life stress on cognition have been relatively understudied. To address this issue, we examined how recent life stress is associated with long-term, working memory, and self-reported memory in a sample of 142 healthy young adults who were assessed at two time points over a two-week period. Recent life stress was measured using the newly-developed Stress and Adversity Inventory for Daily Stress (Daily STRAIN), which assesses the frequency of relatively common stressful life events and difficulties over the preceding two weeks. To assess memory performance, participants completed both long-term and working memory tasks. Participants also provided self-reports of memory problems. As hypothesized, greater recent life stress exposure was associated with worse performance on measures of long-term and working memory, as well as more self-reported memory problems. These associations were largely robust while controlling for possible confounds, including participants' age, sex, and negative affect. The findings indicate that recent life stress exposure is broadly associated with worse memory. Future studies should thus consider assessing recent life stress as a potential predictor, moderator, or covariate of memory performance.
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Pascoe, Leona; Roberts, Gehan; Doyle, Lex W; Lee, Katherine J; Thompson, Deanne K; Seal, Marc L; Josev, Elisha K; Nosarti, Chiara; Gathercole, Susan; Anderson, Peter J
2013-09-16
Very preterm children exhibit difficulties in working memory, a key cognitive ability vital to learning information and the development of academic skills. Previous research suggests that an adaptive working memory training intervention (Cogmed) may improve working memory and other cognitive and behavioural domains, although further randomised controlled trials employing long-term outcomes are needed, and with populations at risk for working memory deficits, such as children born preterm.In a cohort of extremely preterm (<28 weeks' gestation)/extremely low birthweight (<1000 g) 7-year-olds, we will assess the effectiveness of Cogmed in improving academic functioning 2 years' post-intervention. Secondary objectives are to assess the effectiveness of Cogmed in improving working memory and attention 2 weeks', 12 months' and 24 months' post-intervention, and to investigate training related neuroplasticity in working memory neural networks 2 weeks' post-intervention. This double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised controlled trial aims to recruit 126 extremely preterm/extremely low birthweight 7-year-old children. Children attending mainstream school without major intellectual, sensory or physical impairments will be eligible. Participating children will undergo an extensive baseline cognitive assessment before being randomised to either an adaptive or placebo (non-adaptive) version of Cogmed. Cogmed is a computerised working memory training program consisting of 25 sessions completed over a 5 to 7 week period. Each training session takes approximately 35 minutes and will be completed in the child's home. Structural, diffusion and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which is optional for participants, will be completed prior to and 2 weeks following the training period. Follow-up assessments focusing on academic skills (primary outcome), working memory and attention (secondary outcomes) will be conducted at 2 weeks', 12 months' and 24 months' post-intervention. To our knowledge, this study will be the first randomised controlled trial to (a) assess the effectiveness of Cogmed in school-aged extremely preterm/extremely low birthweight children, while incorporating advanced imaging techniques to investigate neural changes associated with adaptive working memory training, and (b) employ long-term follow-up to assess the potential benefit of improved working memory on academic functioning. If effective, Cogmed would serve as a valuable, available intervention for improving developmental outcomes for this population. Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12612000124831.
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Willis, Suzi; Goldbart, Juliet; Stansfield, Jois
2014-07-01
To compare verbal short-term memory and visual working memory abilities of six children with congenital hearing-impairment identified as having significant language learning difficulties with normative data from typically hearing children using standardized memory assessments. Six children with hearing loss aged 8-15 years were assessed on measures of verbal short-term memory (Non-word and word recall) and visual working memory annually over a two year period. All children had cognitive abilities within normal limits and used spoken language as the primary mode of communication. The language assessment scores at the beginning of the study revealed that all six participants exhibited delays of two years or more on standardized assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary and spoken language. The children with hearing-impairment scores were significantly higher on the non-word recall task than the "real" word recall task. They also exhibited significantly higher scores on visual working memory than those of the age-matched sample from the standardized memory assessment. Each of the six participants in this study displayed the same pattern of strengths and weaknesses in verbal short-term memory and visual working memory despite their very different chronological ages. The children's poor ability to recall single syllable words in relation to non-words is a clinical indicator of their difficulties in verbal short-term memory. However, the children with hearing-impairment do not display generalized processing difficulties and indeed demonstrate strengths in visual working memory. The poor ability to recall words, in combination with difficulties with early word learning may be indicators of children with hearing-impairment who will struggle to develop spoken language equal to that of their normally hearing peers. This early identification has the potential to allow for target specific intervention that may remediate their difficulties. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
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Working memory in Farsi-speaking children with normal development and cochlear implant.
Soleymani, Zahra; Amidfar, Meysam; Dadgar, Hooshang; Jalaie, Shohre
2014-04-01
Working memory has an important role in language acquisition and development of cognition skills. The ability of encoding, storage and retrieval of phonological codes, as activities of working memory, acquired by audition sense. Children with cochlear implant experience a period that they are not able to perceive sounds. In order to assess the effect of hearing on working memory, we investigated working memory as a cognition skill in children with normal development and cochlear implant. Fifty students with normal hearing and 50 students with cochlear implant aged 5-7 years participated in this study. Children educated in the preschool, the first and second grades. Children with normal development were matched based on age, gender, and grade of education with cochlear implant. Two components of working memory including phonological loop and central executive were compared between two groups. Phonological loop assessed by nonword repetition task and forward digit span. To assess central executive component backward digit span was used. The developmental trend was studied in children with normal development and cochlear implant as well. The effect of age at implantation in children with cochlear implants on components of working memory was investigated. There are significant differences between children with normal development and cochlear implant in all tasks that assess working memory (p < 0.001). The children's age at implantation was negatively correlated with all tasks (p < 0.001). In contrast, duration of usage of cochlear implant set was positively correlated with all tasks (p < 0.001). The comparison of working memory between different grades showed significant differences both in children with normal development and in children with cochlear implant (p < 0.05). These results implied that children with cochlear implant may experience difficulties in working memory. Therefore, these children have problems in encoding, practicing, and repeating phonological units. The results also suggested working memory develops when the child grows up. In cochlear implant children, with decreasing age at implantation and increasing their experience in perceiving sound, working memory skills improved. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Richey, J. Elizabeth; Phillips, Jeffrey S.; Schunn, Christian D.; Schneider, Walter
2014-01-01
Analogical reasoning has been hypothesized to critically depend upon working memory through correlational data [1], but less work has tested this relationship through experimental manipulation [2]. An opportunity for examining the connection between working memory and analogical reasoning has emerged from the growing, although somewhat controversial, body of literature suggests complex working memory training can sometimes lead to working memory improvements that transfer to novel working memory tasks. This study investigated whether working memory improvements, if replicated, would increase analogical reasoning ability. We assessed participants’ performance on verbal and visual analogy tasks after a complex working memory training program incorporating verbal and spatial tasks [3], [4]. Participants’ improvements on the working memory training tasks transferred to other short-term and working memory tasks, supporting the possibility of broad effects of working memory training. However, we found no effects on analogical reasoning. We propose several possible explanations for the lack of an impact of working memory improvements on analogical reasoning. PMID:25188356
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Visuospatial working memory in very preterm and term born children--impact of age and performance.
Mürner-Lavanchy, I; Ritter, B C; Spencer-Smith, M M; Perrig, W J; Schroth, G; Steinlin, M; Everts, R
2014-07-01
Working memory is crucial for meeting the challenges of daily life and performing academic tasks, such as reading or arithmetic. Very preterm born children are at risk of low working memory capacity. The aim of this study was to examine the visuospatial working memory network of school-aged preterm children and to determine the effect of age and performance on the neural working memory network. Working memory was assessed in 41 very preterm born children and 36 term born controls (aged 7-12 years) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neuropsychological assessment. While preterm children and controls showed equal working memory performance, preterm children showed less involvement of the right middle frontal gyrus, but higher fMRI activation in superior frontal regions than controls. The younger and low-performing preterm children presented an atypical working memory network whereas the older high-performing preterm children recruited a working memory network similar to the controls. Results suggest that younger and low-performing preterm children show signs of less neural efficiency in frontal brain areas. With increasing age and performance, compensational mechanisms seem to occur, so that in preterm children, the typical visuospatial working memory network is established by the age of 12 years. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Millman, Rebecca E.; Mattys, Sven L.
2017-01-01
Purpose: Background noise can interfere with our ability to understand speech. Working memory capacity (WMC) has been shown to contribute to the perception of speech in modulated noise maskers. WMC has been assessed with a variety of auditory and visual tests, often pertaining to different components of working memory. This study assessed the…
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Aasvik, Julie K; Woodhouse, Astrid; Stiles, Tore C; Jacobsen, Henrik B; Landmark, Tormod; Glette, Mari; Borchgrevink, Petter C; Landrø, Nils I
2016-01-01
Introduction: The current study examined if adaptive working memory training (Cogmed QM) has the potential to improve inhibitory control, working memory capacity, and perceptions of memory functioning in a group of patients currently on sick leave due to symptoms of pain, insomnia, fatigue, depression and anxiety. Participants who were referred to a vocational rehabilitation center volunteered to take part in the study. Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to either a training condition ( N = 25) or a control condition ( N = 29). Participants in the training condition received working memory training in addition to the clinical intervention offered as part of the rehabilitation program, while participants in the control condition received treatment as usual i.e., the rehabilitation program only. Inhibitory control was measured by The Stop Signal Task, working memory was assessed by the Spatial Working Memory Test, while perceptions of memory functioning were assessed by The Everyday Memory Questionnaire-Revised. Results: Participants in the training group showed a significant improvement on the post-tests of inhibitory control when compared with the comparison group ( p = 0.025). The groups did not differ on the post-tests of working memory. Both groups reported less memory problems at post-testing, but there was no sizeable difference between the two groups. Conclusions: Results indicate that working memory training does not improve general working memory capacity per se . Nor does it seem to give any added effects in terms of targeting and improving self-perceived memory functioning. Results do, however, provide evidence to suggest that inhibitory control is accessible and susceptible to modification by adaptive working memory training.
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Storbeck, Justin; Maswood, Raeya
2016-08-01
The effects of emotion on working memory and executive control are often studied in isolation. Positive mood enhances verbal and impairs spatial working memory, whereas negative mood enhances spatial and impairs verbal working memory. Moreover, positive mood enhances executive control, whereas negative mood has little influence. We examined how emotion influences verbal and spatial working memory capacity, which requires executive control to coordinate between holding information in working memory and completing a secondary task. We predicted that positive mood would improve both verbal and spatial working memory capacity because of its influence on executive control. Positive, negative and neutral moods were induced followed by completing a verbal (Experiment 1) or spatial (Experiment 2) working memory operation span task to assess working memory capacity. Positive mood enhanced working memory capacity irrespective of the working memory domain, whereas negative mood had no influence on performance. Thus, positive mood was more successful holding information in working memory while processing task-irrelevant information, suggesting that the influence mood has on executive control supersedes the independent effects mood has on domain-specific working memory.
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Nicolaou, E; Quach, J; Lum, J; Roberts, G; Spencer-Smith, M; Gathercole, S; Anderson, P J; Mensah, F K; Wake, M
2018-05-01
Adaptive working memory training is being implemented without an adequate understanding of developmental trajectories of working memory. We aimed to quantify from Grade 1 to Grade 3 of primary school (1) changes in verbal and visuospatial working memory and (2) whether low verbal and visuospatial working memory in Grade 1 predicts low working memory in Grade 3. The study design includes a population-based longitudinal study of 1,802 children (66% uptake from all 2,747 Grade 1 students) at 44 randomly selected primary schools in Melbourne, Australia. Backwards Digit Recall (verbal working memory) and Mister X (visuospatial working memory) screening measures from the Automated Working Memory Assessment (M = 100; SD = 15) were used to assess Grades 1 and 3 (ages 6-7 and 8-9 years) students. Low working memory was defined as ≥1 standard deviation below the standard score mean. Descriptive statistics addressed Aim 1, and predictive parameters addressed Aim 2. One thousand seventy (59%) of 1802 Grade 1 participants were reassessed in Grade 3. As expected for typically developing children, group mean standard scores were similar in Grades 1 and 3 for verbal, visuospatial, and overall working memory, but group mean raw scores increased markedly. Compared to "not low" children, those classified as having low working memory in Grade 1 showed much larger increases in both standard and raw scores across verbal, visuospatial, and overall working memory. Sensitivity was very low for Grade 1 low working memory predicting Grade 3 low classifications. Although mean changes in working memory standard scores between Grades 1 and 3 were minimal, we found that individual development varied widely, with marked natural resolution by Grade 3 in children who initially had low working memory. This may render brain-training interventions ineffective in the early school year ages, particularly if (as population-based programmes usually mandate) selection occurs within a screening paradigm. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Vergauwe, Evie; Barrouillet, Pierre; Camos, Valerie
2009-01-01
Examinations of interference between visual and spatial materials in working memory have suggested domain- and process-based fractionations of visuo-spatial working memory. The present study examined the role of central time-based resource sharing in visuo-spatial working memory and assessed its role in obtained interference patterns. Visual and…
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Phonological Working Memory for Words and Nonwords in Cerebral Cortex.
Perrachione, Tyler K; Ghosh, Satrajit S; Ostrovskaya, Irina; Gabrieli, John D E; Kovelman, Ioulia
2017-07-12
The primary purpose of this study was to identify the brain bases of phonological working memory (the short-term maintenance of speech sounds) using behavioral tasks analogous to clinically sensitive assessments of nonword repetition. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify how individual differences in brain activation were related to participants' nonword repetition abilities. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neurophysiological response during a nonword discrimination task derived from standard clinical assessments of phonological working memory. Healthy adult control participants (N = 16) discriminated pairs of real words or nonwords under varying phonological working memory load, which we manipulated by parametrically varying the number of syllables in target (non)words. Participants' cognitive and phonological abilities were also measured using standardized assessments. Neurophysiological responses in bilateral superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area increased with greater phonological working memory load. Activation in left superior temporal gyrus during nonword discrimination correlated with participants' performance on standard clinical nonword repetition tests. These results suggest that phonological working memory is related to the function of cortical structures that canonically underlie speech perception and production.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ropeter, Anna; Pauen, Sabina
2013-01-01
This study examines the relationship between various basic mental processing abilities in infancy. Two groups of 7-month-olds received the same delayed-response task to assess visuo-spatial working memory, but two different habituation-dishabituation tasks to assess processing speed and recognition memory. The single-stimulus group ("N"…
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Pillet, Benoit; Morvan, Yannick; Todd, Aurelia; Franck, Nicolas; Duboc, Chloé; Grosz, Aimé; Launay, Corinne; Demily, Caroline; Gaillard, Raphaël; Krebs, Marie-Odile; Amado, Isabelle
2015-01-01
Cognitive deficits in schizophrenia mainly affect memory, attention and executive functions. Cognitive remediation is a technique derived from neuropsychology, which aims to improve or compensate for these deficits. Working memory, verbal learning, and executive functions are crucial factors for functional outcome. Our purpose was to assess the impact of the cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) program on cognitive difficulties in patients with schizophrenia, especially on working memory, verbal memory, and cognitive flexibility. We collected data from clinical and neuropsychological assessments in 24 patients suffering from schizophrenia (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental Disorders-Fourth Edition, DSM-IV) who followed a 3-month (CRT) program. Verbal and visuo-spatial working memory, verbal memory, and cognitive flexibility were assessed before and after CRT. The Wilcoxon test showed significant improvements on the backward digit span, on the visual working memory span, on verbal memory and on flexibility. Cognitive improvement was substantial when baseline performance was low, independently from clinical benefit. CRT is effective on crucial cognitive domains and provides a huge benefit for patients having low baseline performance. Such cognitive amelioration appears highly promising for improving the outcome in cognitively impaired patients.
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Bennett, Ilana J.; Rivera, Hannah G.; Rypma, Bart
2013-01-01
Previous studies examining age-group differences in working memory load-related neural activity have yielded mixed results. When present, age-group differences in working memory capacity are frequently proposed to underlie these neural effects. However, direct relationships between working memory capacity and working memory load-related activity have only been observed in younger adults. These relationships remain untested in healthy aging. Therefore, the present study examined patterns of working memory load-related activity in 22 younger and 20 older adults and assessed the contribution of working memory capacity to these load-related effects. Participants performed a partial-trial delayed response item recognition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. In this task, participants encoded either 2 or 6 letters, maintained them during a delay, and then indicated whether a probe was present in the memory set. Behavioral results revealed faster and more accurate responses to load 2 versus 6, with age-group differences in this load condition effect for the accuracy measure. Neuroimaging results revealed one region (medial superior frontal gyrus) that showed age-group differences in load-related activity during the retrieval period, with less (greater) neural activity for the low versus high load condition in younger (older) adults. Furthermore, for older adults, load-related activity did not vary as a function of working memory capacity. Thus, working memory-related activity varies with healthy aging, but these patterns are not due solely to working memory capacity. Neurocognitive aging theories that feature capacity will need to account for these results. PMID:23357076
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nevo, Einat; Breznitz, Zvia
2013-01-01
This study investigated the development of working memory ability (measured by tasks assessing all four working memory components) from the end of kindergarten to the end of first grade--the first year reading is taught in school--and the relationship between working memory abilities in kindergarten and first grade and reading skills in first…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Vock, Miriam; Holling, Heinz
2008-01-01
The objective of this study is to explore the potential for developing IRT-based working memory scales for assessing specific working memory components in children (8-13 years). These working memory scales should measure cognitive abilities reliably in the upper range of ability distribution as well as in the normal range, and provide a…
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Smith, Kelsey E.; Schatz, Jeffrey
2017-01-01
Children with sickle cell disease (SCD) are at risk for working memory deficits due to multiple disease processes. We assessed working memory abilities and related functions in 32 school-age children with SCD and 85 matched comparison children using Baddeley’s working memory model as a framework. Children with SCD performed worse than controls for working memory, central executive function, and processing/rehearsal speed. Central executive function was found to mediate the relationship between SCD status and working memory, but processing speed did not. Cognitive remediation strategies that focus on central executive processes may be important for remediating working memory deficits in SCD. PMID:27759435
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F.; Moran, Catherine
2016-01-01
Purpose: This study explored associations between working memory and language in children aged 2-4 years. Method: Seventy-seven children aged 24-30 months were assessed on tests measuring language, visual cognition, verbal working memory (VWM), phonological short-term memory (PSTM), and processing speed. A standardized test of receptive and…
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Chevalier, Nicolas; Sheffield, Tiffany D.; Nelson, Jennifer Mize; Clark, Caron A. C.; Wiebe, Sandra A.; Espy, Kimberly Andrews
2012-01-01
This study addressed the respective contributions of inhibition and working memory to two underlying components of flexibility, goal representation (as assessed by mixing costs) and switch implementation (as assessed by local costs), across the preschool period. By later preschool age (4 years 6 months and 5 years 3 months), both inhibition and working-memory performance were associated with mixing costs, but not with local costs, whereas no relation was observed earlier (3 years, 9 months). The relations of inhibition and working memory to flexibility appear to emerge late in the preschool period and are mainly driven by goal representation. PMID:22339225
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Phonological Working Memory for Words and Nonwords in Cerebral Cortex
Ghosh, Satrajit S.; Ostrovskaya, Irina; Gabrieli, John D. E.; Kovelman, Ioulia
2017-01-01
Purpose The primary purpose of this study was to identify the brain bases of phonological working memory (the short-term maintenance of speech sounds) using behavioral tasks analogous to clinically sensitive assessments of nonword repetition. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify how individual differences in brain activation were related to participants' nonword repetition abilities. Method We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neurophysiological response during a nonword discrimination task derived from standard clinical assessments of phonological working memory. Healthy adult control participants (N = 16) discriminated pairs of real words or nonwords under varying phonological working memory load, which we manipulated by parametrically varying the number of syllables in target (non)words. Participants' cognitive and phonological abilities were also measured using standardized assessments. Results Neurophysiological responses in bilateral superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area increased with greater phonological working memory load. Activation in left superior temporal gyrus during nonword discrimination correlated with participants' performance on standard clinical nonword repetition tests. Conclusion These results suggest that phonological working memory is related to the function of cortical structures that canonically underlie speech perception and production. PMID:28631005
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Bennett, Ilana J; Rivera, Hannah G; Rypma, Bart
2013-05-15
Previous studies examining age-group differences in working memory load-related neural activity have yielded mixed results. When present, age-group differences in working memory capacity are frequently proposed to underlie these neural effects. However, direct relationships between working memory capacity and working memory load-related activity have only been observed in younger adults. These relationships remain untested in healthy aging. Therefore, the present study examined patterns of working memory load-related activity in 22 younger and 20 older adults and assessed the contribution of working memory capacity to these load-related effects. Participants performed a partial-trial delayed response item recognition task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. In this task, participants encoded either 2 or 6 letters, maintained them during a delay, and then indicated whether a probe was present in the memory set. Behavioral results revealed faster and more accurate responses to load 2 versus 6, with age-group differences in this load condition effect for the accuracy measure. Neuroimaging results revealed one region (medial superior frontal gyrus) that showed age-group differences in load-related activity during the retrieval period, with less (greater) neural activity for the low versus high load condition in younger (older) adults. Furthermore, for older adults, load-related activity did not vary as a function of working memory capacity. Thus, working memory-related activity varies with healthy aging, but these patterns are not due solely to working memory capacity. Neurocognitive aging theories that feature capacity will need to account for these results. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Penley, Stephanie C; Gaudet, Cynthia M; Threlkeld, Steven W
2013-12-04
Working and reference memory are commonly assessed using the land based radial arm maze. However, this paradigm requires pretraining, food deprivation, and may introduce scent cue confounds. The eight-arm radial water maze is designed to evaluate reference and working memory performance simultaneously by requiring subjects to use extra-maze cues to locate escape platforms and remedies the limitations observed in land based radial arm maze designs. Specifically, subjects are required to avoid the arms previously used for escape during each testing day (working memory) as well as avoid the fixed arms, which never contain escape platforms (reference memory). Re-entries into arms that have already been used for escape during a testing session (and thus the escape platform has been removed) and re-entries into reference memory arms are indicative of working memory deficits. Alternatively, first entries into reference memory arms are indicative of reference memory deficits. We used this maze to compare performance of rats with neonatal brain injury and sham controls following induction of hypoxia-ischemia and show significant deficits in both working and reference memory after eleven days of testing. This protocol could be easily modified to examine many other models of learning impairment.
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How to Assess Gaming-Induced Benefits on Attention and Working Memory.
Mishra, Jyoti; Bavelier, Daphne; Gazzaley, Adam
2012-06-01
Our daily actions are driven by our goals in the moment, constantly forcing us to choose among various options. Attention and working memory are key enablers of that process. Attention allows for selective processing of goal-relevant information and rejecting task-irrelevant information. Working memory functions to maintain goal-relevant information in memory for brief periods of time for subsequent recall and/or manipulation. Efficient attention and working memory thus support the best extraction and retention of environmental information for optimal task performance. Recent studies have evidenced that attention and working memory abilities can be enhanced by cognitive training games as well as entertainment videogames. Here we review key cognitive paradigms that have been used to evaluate the impact of game-based training on various aspects of attention and working memory. Common use of such methodology within the scientific community will enable direct comparison of the efficacy of different games across age groups and clinical populations. The availability of common assessment tools will ultimately facilitate development of the most effective forms of game-based training for cognitive rehabilitation and education.
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How to Assess Gaming-Induced Benefits on Attention and Working Memory
Mishra, Jyoti; Bavelier, Daphne
2012-01-01
Abstract Our daily actions are driven by our goals in the moment, constantly forcing us to choose among various options. Attention and working memory are key enablers of that process. Attention allows for selective processing of goal-relevant information and rejecting task-irrelevant information. Working memory functions to maintain goal-relevant information in memory for brief periods of time for subsequent recall and/or manipulation. Efficient attention and working memory thus support the best extraction and retention of environmental information for optimal task performance. Recent studies have evidenced that attention and working memory abilities can be enhanced by cognitive training games as well as entertainment videogames. Here we review key cognitive paradigms that have been used to evaluate the impact of game-based training on various aspects of attention and working memory. Common use of such methodology within the scientific community will enable direct comparison of the efficacy of different games across age groups and clinical populations. The availability of common assessment tools will ultimately facilitate development of the most effective forms of game-based training for cognitive rehabilitation and education. PMID:24761314
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Working Memory Capacity, Confidence and Scientific Thinking
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Al-Ahmadi, Fatheya; Oraif, Fatima
2009-01-01
Working memory capacity is now well established as a rate determining factor in much learning and assessment, especially in the sciences. Most of the research has focussed on performance in tests and examinations in subject areas. This paper outlines some exploratory work in which other outcomes are related to working memory capacity. Confidence…
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Van de Weijer-Bergsma, Eva; Kroesbergen, Evelyn H; Van Luit, Johannes E H
2015-04-01
The relative importance of visual-spatial and verbal working memory for mathematics performance and learning seems to vary with age, the novelty of the material, and the specific math domain that is investigated. In this study, the relations between verbal and visual-spatial working memory and performance in four math domains (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) at different ages during primary school are investigated. Children (N = 4337) from grades 2 through 6 participated. Visual-spatial and verbal working memory were assessed using online computerized tasks. Math performance was assessed at the start, middle, and end of the school year using a speeded arithmetic test. Multilevel Multigroup Latent Growth Modeling was used to model individual differences in level and growth in math performance, and examine the predictive value of working memory per grade, while controlling for effects of classroom membership. The results showed that as grade level progressed, the predictive value of visual-spatial working memory for individual differences in level of mathematics performance waned, while the predictive value of verbal working memory increased. Working memory did not predict individual differences between children in their rate of performance growth throughout the school year. These findings are discussed in relation to three, not mutually exclusive, explanations for such age-related findings.
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Brébion, G; Stephan-Otto, C; Huerta-Ramos, E; Usall, J; Perez Del Olmo, M; Contel, M; Haro, J M; Ochoa, S
2014-10-01
Verbal working memory span is decreased in patients with schizophrenia, and this might contribute to impairment in higher cognitive functions as well as to the formation of certain clinical symptoms. Processing speed has been identified as a crucial factor in cognitive efficiency in this population. We tested the hypothesis that decreased processing speed underlies the verbal working memory deficit in patients and mediates the associations between working memory span and clinical symptoms. Forty-nine schizophrenia inpatients recruited from units for chronic and acute patients, and forty-five healthy participants, were involved in the study. Verbal working memory span was assessed by means of the letter-number span. The Digit Copy test was used to assess motor speed, and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test to assess cognitive speed. The working memory span was significantly impaired in patients (F(1,90)=4.6, P<0.05). However, the group difference was eliminated when either the motor or the cognitive speed measure was controlled (F(1,89)=0.03, P=0.86, and F(1,89)=0.03, P=0.88). In the patient group, working memory span was significantly correlated with negative symptoms (r=-0.52, P<0.0001) and thought disorganisation (r=-0.34, P<0.025) scores. Regression analyses showed that the association with negative symptoms was no longer significant when the motor speed measure was controlled (β=-0.12, P=0.20), while the association with thought disorganisation was no longer significant when the cognitive speed measure was controlled (β=-0.10, P=0.26). Decrement in motor and cognitive speed plays a significant role in both the verbal working memory impairment observed in patients and the associations between verbal working memory impairment and clinical symptoms. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
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HPA Axis Function Alters Development of Working Memory in Boys with FXS
Scherr, Jessica F.; Hahn, Laura J.; Hooper, Stephen R.; Hatton, Deborah; Roberts, Jane E.
2016-01-01
The present study examines verbal working memory over time in boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS) compared to nonverbal mental-age (NVMA) matched, typically developing (TD) boys. Concomitantly, the relationship between cortisol—a physiological marker for stress—and verbal working memory performance over time is examined to understand the role of physiological mechanisms in cognitive development in FXS. Participants were assessed between one and three times over a 2-year time frame using two verbal working memory tests that differ in complexity: memory for words and auditory working memory with salivary cortisol collected at the beginning and end of each assessment. Multilevel modeling results indicate specific deficits over time on the memory for words task in boys with FXS compared to TD controls that is exacerbated by elevated baseline cortisol. Similar increasing rates of growth over time were observed for boys with FXS and TD controls on the more complex auditory working memory task, but only boys with FXS displayed an association of increased baseline cortisol and lower performance. This study highlights the benefit of investigations of how dynamic biological and cognitive factors interact and influence cognitive development over time. PMID:26760450
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Attention and Working Memory as Predictors of Intelligence
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schweizer, Karl; Moosbrugger, Helfried
2004-01-01
The paper reports on an investigation of attention and working memory as sources of intelligence. The investigation was concentrated on the relatedness of attention and working memory as predictors of intelligence and on the structure underlying the prediction. In a sample of 120 participants, intelligence was assessed by the Advanced Progressive…
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FMRI of visual working memory in high school football players.
Shenk, Trey E; Robinson, Meghan E; Svaldi, Diana O; Abbas, Kausar; Breedlove, Katherine M; Leverenz, Larry J; Nauman, Eric A; Talavage, Thomas M
2015-01-01
Visual working memory deficits have been observed in at-risk athletes. This study uses a visual N-back working memory functional magnetic resonance imaging task to longitudinally assess asymptomatic football athletes for abnormal activity. Athletes were increasingly "flagged" as the season progressed. Flagging may provide early detection of injury.
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Long-term pitch memory for music recordings is related to auditory working memory precision.
Van Hedger, Stephen C; Heald, Shannon Lm; Nusbaum, Howard C
2018-04-01
Most individuals have reliable long-term memories for the pitch of familiar music recordings. This pitch memory (1) appears to be normally distributed in the population, (2) does not depend on explicit musical training and (3) only seems to be weakly related to differences in listening frequency estimates. The present experiment was designed to assess whether individual differences in auditory working memory could explain variance in long-term pitch memory for music recordings. In Experiment 1, participants first completed a musical note adjustment task that has been previously used to assess working memory of musical pitch. Afterward, participants were asked to judge the pitch of well-known music recordings, which either had or had not been shifted in pitch. We found that performance on the pitch working memory task was significantly related to performance in the pitch memory task using well-known recordings, even when controlling for overall musical experience and familiarity with each recording. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings in a separate group of participants while additionally controlling for fluid intelligence and non-pitch-based components of auditory working memory. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that participants could not accurately judge the pitch of unfamiliar recordings, suggesting that our method of pitch shifting did not result in unwanted acoustic cues that could have aided participants in Experiments 1 and 2. These results, taken together, suggest that the ability to maintain pitch information in working memory might lead to more accurate long-term pitch memory.
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Developmental gender differences in children in a virtual spatial memory task.
León, Irene; Cimadevilla, José Manuel; Tascón, Laura
2014-07-01
Behavioral achievements are the product of brain maturation. During postnatal development, the medial temporal lobe completes its maturation, and children acquire new memory abilities. In recent years, virtual reality-based tasks have been introduced in the neuropsychology field to assess different cognitive functions. In this work, desktop virtual reality tasks are combined with classic psychometric tests to assess spatial abilities in 4- to 10-year-old children. Fifty boys and 50 girls 4-10-years of age participated in this study. Spatial reference memory and spatial working memory were assessed using a desktop virtual reality-based task. Other classic psychometric tests were also included in this work (e.g., the Corsi Block Tapping Test, digit tests, 10/36 Spatial Recall Test). In general terms, 4- and 5-year-old groups showed poorer performance than the older groups. However, 5-year-old children showed basic spatial navigation abilities with little difficulty. In addition, boys outperformed girls from the 6-8-year-old groups. Gender differences only emerged in the reference-memory version of the spatial task, whereas both sexes displayed similar performances in the working-memory version. There was general improvement in the performance of different tasks in children older than 5 years. However, results also suggest that brain regions involved in allocentric memory are functional even at the age of 5. In addition, the brain structures underlying reference memory mature later in girls than those required for the working memory.
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Perlow, Richard; Jattuso, Mia
2018-06-01
Researchers have operationalized working memory in different ways and although working memory-performance relationships are well documented, there has been relatively less attention devoted to determining whether seemingly similar measures yield comparable relations with performance outcomes. Our objective is to assess whether two working memory measures deploying the same processes but different item content yield different relations with two problem-solving criteria. Participants completed a computation-based working memory measure and a reading-based measure prior to performing a computerized simulation. Results reveal differential relations with one of the two criteria and support the notion that the two working memory measures tap working memory capacity and other cognitive abilities. One implication for theory development is that researchers should consider incorporating other cognitive abilities in their working memory models and that the selection of those abilities should correspond to the criterion of interest. One practical implication is that researchers and practitioners shouldn't automatically assume that different phonological loop-based working memory scales are interchangeable.
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Lee, Hom-Yi; Yang, En-Lin
2018-01-01
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are often reported to have deficits of time perception. However, there is a strong relation between performance on tasks of working memory and time perception. Thus, it is possible that the poor performance of children with ADHD on time perception results from their deficit of working memory. In this study, the working memory of participants was separately assessed; therefore, we could explore the relationship between working memory and time perception of children with ADHD. Fifty-six children with ADHD and those of healthy controls completed tasks measuring working memory and time perception. The results showed that the time discrimination ability of children with ADHD was poorer than that of controls. However, there was a strong association between time perception and working memory. After controlling working memory and intelligence, the time discrimination ability of children with ADHD was not significantly poorer than that of controls. We suggest that there is an interdependent relationship between time perception and working memory for children with ADHD.
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Sloan, Anthony R; McGovern, Robin; Buffalari, Deanne M
Recent studies have suggested that college students are heavily engaged in non-medical use of stimulant drugs prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. This age group is also at high risk for alcohol use. Despite their potential co-abuse, little work has examined how these drugs interact to affect cognitive abilities. In fact, these drugs have opposing effects on working memory, which brings into question how they may interact to affect this particular behavior. The purpose of this research was to examine the concomitant effects of methylphenidate (MPH) and ethanol (EtOH) on working and reference memory. Rats were first trained on the radial arm maze task to establish a baseline performance rate measured as average number of reference and working memory errors. Performance was then assessed after injections of saline, MPH alone, EtOH alone, and MPH+EtOH combined. While both doses of MPH caused nonsignificant improvements in working memory, when combined with EtOH, there was an overall impairment in working and reference memory compared to other conditions. EtOH alone also decreased memory. These data indicate increased impairment of memory function with combined MPH and EtOH use. By understanding how the combination of methylphenidate and alcohol affects memory, we can better assess the risks of taking both substances simultaneously. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Delayed Recall and Working Memory MMSE Domains Predict Delirium following Cardiac Surgery.
Price, Catherine C; Garvan, Cynthia; Hizel, Loren P; Lopez, Marcos G; Billings, Frederic T
2017-01-01
Reduced preoperative cognition is a risk factor for postoperative delirium. The significance for type of preoperative cognitive deficit, however, has yet to be explored and could provide important insights into mechanisms and prediction of delirium. Our goal was to determine if certain cognitive domains from the general cognitive screener, the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE), predict delirium after cardiac surgery. Patients completed a preoperative MMSE prior to undergoing elective cardiac surgery. Following surgery, delirium was assessed throughout ICU stay using the Confusion Assessment Method for ICU delirium and the Richmond Agitation and Sedation Scale. Cardiac surgery patients who developed delirium (n = 137) had lower total MMSE scores than patients who did not develop delirium (n = 457). In particular, orientation to place, working memory, delayed recall, and language domain scores were lower. Of these, only the working memory and delayed recall domains predicted delirium in a regression model adjusting for history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, age, sex, and duration of cardiopulmonary bypass. For each word not recalled on the three-word delayed recall assessment, the odds of delirium increased by 50%. For each item missed on the working memory index, the odds of delirium increased by 36%. Of the patients who developed delirium, 47% had a primary impairment in memory, 21% in working memory, and 33% in both domains. The area under the receiver operating characteristics curve using only the working memory and delayed recall domains was 0.75, compared to 0.76 for total MMSE score. Delirium risk is greater for individuals with reduced MMSE scores on the delayed recall and working memory domains. Research should address why patients with memory and executive vulnerabilities are more prone to postoperative delirium than those with other cognitive limitations.
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Working Memory in the Classroom: An Inside Look at the Central Executive.
Barker, Lauren A
2016-01-01
This article provides a review of working memory and its application to educational settings. A discussion of the varying definitions of working memory is presented. Special attention is given to the various multidisciplinary professionals who work with students with working memory deficits, and their unique understanding of the construct. Definitions and theories of working memory are briefly summarized and provide the foundation for understanding practical applications of working memory to assessment and intervention. Although definitions and models of working memory abound, there is limited consensus regarding universally accepted definitions and models. Current research indicates that developing new models of working memory may be an appropriate paradigm shift at this time. The integration of individual practitioner's knowledge regarding academic achievement, working memory and processing speed could provide a foundation for the future development of new working memory models. Future directions for research should aim to explain how tasks and behaviors are supported by the substrates of the cortico-striatal and the cerebro-cerebellar systems. Translation of neurobiological information into educational contexts will be helpful to inform all practitioners' knowledge of working memory constructs. It will also allow for universally accepted definitions and models of working memory to arise and facilitate more effective collaboration between disciplines working in educational setting.
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Verrico, Christopher D.; Gu, Hong; Peterson, Melanie L.; Sampson, Allan R.; Lewis, David A.
2014-01-01
Objective Epidemiological findings suggest that, relative to adults, adolescents are more vulnerable to the adverse persistent effects of cannabis on working memory. However, the potential confounds inherent in human studies preclude direct determination of a cause-and-effect relationship between adolescent cannabis use and heightened susceptibility to persistent working memory impairments. Consequently, the authors examined the effects of repeated exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on performance of spatial and object working memory tasks in adolescent monkeys. Method Seven pairs of male adolescent rhesus monkeys, matched for baseline cognitive performance, received vehicle or THC intravenously 5 days/week for 6 months. Performance on spatial and object memory tasks was assessed 23 or 71 hours after drug administration throughout the study. In addition, acute effects on working memory were also assessed at the beginning and end of the 6-month period. Results Relative to the vehicle-exposed control animals, those with repeated THC exposure had a blunted trajectory of accuracy improvements on the spatial working memory task in a delay-dependent manner. Accuracy improvements on the object working memory task did not differ between groups. Relative to the acute effects of THC on working memory at the beginning of the study, neither sensitivity nor tolerance was evident after 6 months of THC exposure. Conclusions Because maturation of performance is later for spatial than for object working memory, these findings suggest that persistent effects of THC on cognitive abilities are more evident when exposure coincides with the developmental stage during which the underlying neural circuits are actively maturing. PMID:24577206
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Verrico, Christopher D; Gu, Hong; Peterson, Melanie L; Sampson, Allan R; Lewis, David A
2014-04-01
Epidemiological findings suggest that, relative to adults, adolescents are more vulnerable to the adverse persistent effects of cannabis on working memory. However, the potential confounds inherent in human studies preclude direct determination of a cause-and-effect relationship between adolescent cannabis use and heightened susceptibility to persistent working memory impairments. Consequently, the authors examined the effects of repeated exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on performance of spatial and object working memory tasks in adolescent monkeys. Seven pairs of male adolescent rhesus monkeys, matched for baseline cognitive performance, received vehicle or THC intravenously 5 days/week for 6 months. Performance on spatial and object memory tasks was assessed 23 or 71 hours after drug administration throughout the study. In addition, acute effects on working memory were also assessed at the beginning and end of the 6-month period. Relative to the vehicle-exposed control animals, those with repeated THC exposure had a blunted trajectory of accuracy improvements on the spatial working memory task in a delay-dependent manner. Accuracy improvements on the object working memory task did not differ between groups. Relative to the acute effects of THC on working memory at the beginning of the study, neither sensitivity nor tolerance was evident after 6 months of THC exposure. Because maturation of performance is later for spatial than for object working memory, these findings suggest that persistent effects of THC on cognitive abilities are more evident when exposure coincides with the developmental stage during which the underlying neural circuits are actively maturing.
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Lotfi, Yones; Mehrkian, Saiedeh; Moossavi, Abdollah; Zadeh, Soghrat Faghih; Sadjedi, Hamed
2016-03-01
This study assessed the relationship between working memory capacity and auditory stream segregation by using the concurrent minimum audible angle in children with a diagnosed auditory processing disorder (APD). The participants in this cross-sectional, comparative study were 20 typically developing children and 15 children with a diagnosed APD (age, 9-11 years) according to the subtests of multiple-processing auditory assessment. Auditory stream segregation was investigated using the concurrent minimum audible angle. Working memory capacity was evaluated using the non-word repetition and forward and backward digit span tasks. Nonparametric statistics were utilized to compare the between-group differences. The Pearson correlation was employed to measure the degree of association between working memory capacity and the localization tests between the 2 groups. The group with APD had significantly lower scores than did the typically developing subjects in auditory stream segregation and working memory capacity. There were significant negative correlations between working memory capacity and the concurrent minimum audible angle in the most frontal reference location (0° azimuth) and lower negative correlations in the most lateral reference location (60° azimuth) in the children with APD. The study revealed a relationship between working memory capacity and auditory stream segregation in children with APD. The research suggests that lower working memory capacity in children with APD may be the possible cause of the inability to segregate and group incoming information.
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Salience of working-memory maintenance and manipulation deficits in schizophrenia
Hill, S. K.; Griffin, G. B.; Miura, T. Kazuto; Herbener, E. S.; Sweeney, J. A.
2011-01-01
Background Encoding and maintenance of information in working memory, followed by internal manipulation of that information for planning adaptive behavior, are two key components of working-memory systems. Both processes have been reported to be impaired in schizophrenia, but few studies have directly compared the relative severity of these abnormalities, or the degree to which manipulation deficits might be secondary to alterations in maintenance processes. Method Clinically stable schizophrenia patients (n=25) and a demographically similar healthy comparison group (n=24) were administered a verbal span task with three levels of working-memory load. Maintenance was assessed using sequential position questions. Manipulation processes were assessed by requiring comparison of the relative sequential position of test items, which entailed simultaneous serial search strategies regarding item order. Results Both groups showed reduced accuracy and increased reaction time for manipulation compared with maintenance processing. There were significant patient impairments across working-memory loads. There was no differential deficit in manipulation processing, and effect sizes of relative deficit in the patient group were higher for maintenance than manipulation processing. Conclusions The strong correlation for maintenance and manipulation deficits suggest that impairments in the ability to internally manipulate information stored in working-memory systems are not greater than alterations in the encoding and maintaining of information in working memory and that disturbances in maintenance processing may contribute to deficits in higher-order working-memory operations. PMID:20214839
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Rohrer-Baumgartner, Nina; Zeiner, Pål; Egeland, Jens; Gustavson, Kristin; Skogan, Annette Holth; Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ted; Aase, Heidi
2014-05-01
Working memory, inhibition, and expressive language are often impaired in ADHD and many children with ADHD have lower IQ-scores than typically developing children. The aim of this study was to test whether IQ-score influences associations between ADHD symptoms and verbal and nonverbal working memory, inhibition, and expressive language, respectively, in a nonclinical sample of preschool children. In all, 1181 children recruited from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were clinically assessed at the age of 36 to 46 months. IQ-score and working memory were assessed with subtasks from the Stanford Binet test battery, expressive language was reported by preschool teachers (Child Development Inventory), response inhibition was assessed with a subtask from the NEPSY test, and ADHD symptoms were assessed by parent interview (Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment). The results showed an interaction between ADHD symptoms and IQ-score on teacher-reported expressive language. In children with below median IQ-score, a larger number of ADHD symptoms were more likely to be accompanied by reports of lower expressive language skills, while the level of ADHD symptoms exerted a smaller effect on reported language skills in children with above median IQ-score. The associations between ADHD symptoms and working memory and response inhibition, respectively, were not influenced by IQ-score. Level of IQ-score affected the relation between ADHD symptoms and teacher-reported expressive language, whereas associations between ADHD symptoms and working memory and response inhibition, respectively, were significant and of similar sizes regardless of IQ-score. Thus, in preschoolers, working memory and response inhibition should be considered during an ADHD assessment regardless of IQ-score, while language skills of young children are especially important to consider when IQ-scores are average or low.
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2014-01-01
Background Working memory, inhibition, and expressive language are often impaired in ADHD and many children with ADHD have lower IQ-scores than typically developing children. The aim of this study was to test whether IQ-score influences associations between ADHD symptoms and verbal and nonverbal working memory, inhibition, and expressive language, respectively, in a nonclinical sample of preschool children. Methods In all, 1181 children recruited from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were clinically assessed at the age of 36 to 46 months. IQ-score and working memory were assessed with subtasks from the Stanford Binet test battery, expressive language was reported by preschool teachers (Child Development Inventory), response inhibition was assessed with a subtask from the NEPSY test, and ADHD symptoms were assessed by parent interview (Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment). Results The results showed an interaction between ADHD symptoms and IQ-score on teacher-reported expressive language. In children with below median IQ-score, a larger number of ADHD symptoms were more likely to be accompanied by reports of lower expressive language skills, while the level of ADHD symptoms exerted a smaller effect on reported language skills in children with above median IQ-score. The associations between ADHD symptoms and working memory and response inhibition, respectively, were not influenced by IQ-score. Conclusions Level of IQ-score affected the relation between ADHD symptoms and teacher-reported expressive language, whereas associations between ADHD symptoms and working memory and response inhibition, respectively, were significant and of similar sizes regardless of IQ-score. Thus, in preschoolers, working memory and response inhibition should be considered during an ADHD assessment regardless of IQ-score, while language skills of young children are especially important to consider when IQ-scores are average or low. PMID:24884579
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Working Memory, Cognitive Style, and Behavioural Predictors of GCSE Exam Success
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grimley, Michael; Banner, Gloria
2008-01-01
This study investigates the interplay of working memory, cognitive style, and behaviour. Year 8 (aged 13 years) students (n = 205) at a UK urban secondary school were tested to ascertain predictors of General Certificate of School Education (GCSE) achievement. Assessment included Riding's cognitive style dimensions, working memory capacity, and a…
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Verbal Working Memory in Children with Cochlear Implants
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nittrouer, Susan; Caldwell-Tarr, Amanda; Low, Keri E.; Lowenstein, Joanna H.
2017-01-01
Purpose: Verbal working memory in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing was examined. Participants: Ninety-three fourth graders (47 with normal hearing, 46 with cochlear implants) participated, all of whom were in a longitudinal study and had working memory assessed 2 years earlier. Method: A dual-component model of…
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Evidence for Different Components in Children's Visuospatial Working Memory
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mammarella, Irene C.; Pazzaglia, Francesca; Cornoldi, Cesare
2008-01-01
There are a large number of studies demonstrating that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) involves different subcomponents, but there is no agreement on the identity of these dimensions. The present study attempts to combine different theoretical accounts by measuring VSWM. A battery composed of 13 tests was used to assess working memory and, in…
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Mental Capacity and Working Memory in Chemistry: Algorithmic "versus" Open-Ended Problem Solving
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
St Clair-Thompson, Helen; Overton, Tina; Bugler, Myfanwy
2012-01-01
Previous research has revealed that problem solving and attainment in chemistry are constrained by mental capacity and working memory. However, the terms mental capacity and working memory come from different theories of cognitive resources, and are assessed using different tasks. The current study examined the relationships between mental…
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Mental Imagery and Visual Working Memory
Keogh, Rebecca; Pearson, Joel
2011-01-01
Visual working memory provides an essential link between past and future events. Despite recent efforts, capacity limits, their genesis and the underlying neural structures of visual working memory remain unclear. Here we show that performance in visual working memory - but not iconic visual memory - can be predicted by the strength of mental imagery as assessed with binocular rivalry in a given individual. In addition, for individuals with strong imagery, modulating the background luminance diminished performance on visual working memory and imagery tasks, but not working memory for number strings. This suggests that luminance signals were disrupting sensory-based imagery mechanisms and not a general working memory system. Individuals with poor imagery still performed above chance in the visual working memory task, but their performance was not affected by the background luminance, suggesting a dichotomy in strategies for visual working memory: individuals with strong mental imagery rely on sensory-based imagery to support mnemonic performance, while those with poor imagery rely on different strategies. These findings could help reconcile current controversy regarding the mechanism and location of visual mnemonic storage. PMID:22195024
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Mental imagery and visual working memory.
Keogh, Rebecca; Pearson, Joel
2011-01-01
Visual working memory provides an essential link between past and future events. Despite recent efforts, capacity limits, their genesis and the underlying neural structures of visual working memory remain unclear. Here we show that performance in visual working memory--but not iconic visual memory--can be predicted by the strength of mental imagery as assessed with binocular rivalry in a given individual. In addition, for individuals with strong imagery, modulating the background luminance diminished performance on visual working memory and imagery tasks, but not working memory for number strings. This suggests that luminance signals were disrupting sensory-based imagery mechanisms and not a general working memory system. Individuals with poor imagery still performed above chance in the visual working memory task, but their performance was not affected by the background luminance, suggesting a dichotomy in strategies for visual working memory: individuals with strong mental imagery rely on sensory-based imagery to support mnemonic performance, while those with poor imagery rely on different strategies. These findings could help reconcile current controversy regarding the mechanism and location of visual mnemonic storage.
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Roberts, Gehan; Quach, Jon; Spencer-Smith, Megan; Anderson, Peter J; Gathercole, Susan; Gold, Lisa; Sia, Kah-Ling; Mensah, Fiona; Rickards, Field; Ainley, John; Wake, Melissa
2016-05-02
Working memory training may help children with attention and learning difficulties, but robust evidence from population-level randomized controlled clinical trials is lacking. To test whether a computerized adaptive working memory intervention program improves long-term academic outcomes of children 6 to 7 years of age with low working memory compared with usual classroom teaching. Population-based randomized controlled clinical trial of first graders from 44 schools in Melbourne, Australia, who underwent a verbal and visuospatial working memory screening. Children were classified as having low working memory if their scores were below the 15th percentile on either the Backward Digit Recall or Mister X subtest from the Automated Working Memory Assessment, or if their scores were below the 25th percentile on both. These children were randomly assigned by an independent statistician to either an intervention or a control arm using a concealed computerized random number sequence. Researchers were blinded to group assignment at time of screening. We conducted our trial from March 1, 2012, to February 1, 2015; our final analysis was on October 30, 2015. We used intention-to-treat analyses. Cogmed working memory training, comprising 20 to 25 training sessions of 45 minutes' duration at school. Directly assessed (at 12 and 24 months) academic outcomes (reading, math, and spelling scores as primary outcomes) and working memory (also assessed at 6 months); parent-, teacher-, and child-reported behavioral and social-emotional functioning and quality of life; and intervention costs. Of 1723 children screened (mean [SD] age, 6.9 [0.4] years), 226 were randomized to each arm (452 total), with 90% retention at 1 year and 88% retention at 2 years; 90.3% of children in the intervention arm completed at least 20 sessions. Of the 4 short-term and working memory outcomes, 1 outcome (visuospatial short-term memory) benefited the children at 6 months (effect size, 0.43 [95% CI, 0.25-0.62]) and 12 months (effect size, 0.49 [95% CI, 0.28-0.70]), but not at 24 months. There were no benefits to any other outcomes; in fact, the math scores of the children in the intervention arm were worse at 2 years (mean difference, -3.0 [95% CI, -5.4 to -0.7]; P = .01). Intervention costs were A$1035 per child. Working memory screening of children 6 to 7 years of age is feasible, and an adaptive working memory training program may temporarily improve visuospatial short-term memory. Given the loss of classroom time, cost, and lack of lasting benefit, we cannot recommend population-based delivery of Cogmed within a screening paradigm. anzctr.org.au Identifier: ACTRN12610000486022.
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Forsyth, Jennifer; Bachman, Peter; Asarnow, Robert
2017-01-01
Abstract Background: Gamma band oscillations (30–80 Hz) are associated with numerous sensory and higher cognitive functions and are abnormal in patients with schizophrenia. Glutamate signaling at the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) is theorized to play a key role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and NMDAR antagonists disrupt working memory and gamma oscillations in healthy individuals. It has therefore been suggested that NMDAR dysfunction may contribute to abnormalities in gamma oscillations and working memory in schizophrenia. In the current study, we examined the effects of acutely augmenting NMDAR signaling using the NMDAR agonist, d-cycloserine (DCS), on working memory and gamma power in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: In a double-blind design, patients with schizophrenia were randomized to receive a single dose of 100 mg DCS (SZ-DCS; n = 24) or Placebo (SZ-PLC; n = 21). Patients completed a spatial n-back task involving a 0-back control condition and 1-back and 2-back working memory loads while undergoing EEG recording. Gamma power (30–80 Hz) during the 0-back condition assessed gamma power associated with basic perceptual, motor, and attentive processes. Change in gamma power for correct working memory trials relative to the 0-back condition assessed gamma power associated with working memory function. Results: Among patients who performed above chance (SZ-DCS = 17, SZ-PLC = 16), patients who received DCS showed superior working memory performance compared to patients who received Placebo. Gamma power during the 0-back control condition was similar between SZ-DCS and SZ-PLC who performed above chance. However, gamma power associated with working memory function was significantly suppressed in SZ-DCS compared to SZ-PLC, particularly over frontal right channels. In addition, whereas higher working memory gamma power over frontal right channels was associated with better working memory performance in SZ-PLC, this relationship was not evident in SZ-DCS. Conclusion: Results suggest that augmenting NMDAR signaling enhanced working memory performance and suppressed gamma activity associated with working memory function in patients with schizophrenia. Given prior reports that schizophrenia patients may utilize excessive gamma power for successful working memory performance, these findings suggest that augmenting NMDAR signaling may improve the efficiency of neural encoding for successful working memory function in schizophrenia.
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Banks, Jonathan B; Tartar, Jaime L; Tamayo, Brittney A
2015-12-01
A large and growing body of research demonstrates the impact of psychological stress on working memory. However, the typical study approach tests the effects of a single biological or psychological factor on changes in working memory. The current study attempted to move beyond the standard single-factor assessment by examining the impact of 2 possible factors in stress-related working memory impairments. To this end, 60 participants completed a working memory task before and after either a psychological stressor writing task or a control writing task and completed measures of both cortisol and mind wandering. We also included a measure of state anxiety to examine the direct and indirect effect on working memory. We found that mind wandering mediated the relationship between state anxiety and working memory at the baseline measurement. This indirect relationship was moderated by cortisol, such that the impact of mind wandering on working memory increased as cortisol levels increased. No overall working memory impairment was observed following the stress manipulation, but increases in state anxiety and mind wandering were observed. State anxiety and mind wandering independently mediated the relationship between change in working memory and threat perception. The indirect paths resulted in opposing effects on working memory. Combined, the findings from this study suggest that cortisol enhances the impact of mind wandering on working memory, that state anxiety may not always result in stress-related working memory impairments, and that high working memory performance can protect against mind wandering. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Greneche, Jerome; Krieger, Jean; Bertrand, Frederic; Erhardt, Christine; Maumy, Myriam; Tassi, Patricia
2011-01-01
Both working and immediate memories were assessed every 4 h by specific short-term memory tasks over sustained wakefulness in 12 patients with obstructive sleep apnea and hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) and 10 healthy controls. Results indicated that OSAHS patients exhibited lower working memory performances than controls on both backward digit span and…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Waite, Jane; Beck, Sarah R.; Heald, Mary; Powis, Laurie; Oliver, Chris
2016-01-01
Working memory (WM) impairments might amplify behavioural difference in genetic syndromes. Murine models of Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome (RTS) evidence memory impairments but there is limited research on memory in RTS. Individuals with RTS and typically developing children completed WM tasks, with participants with RTS completing an IQ assessment and…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
De Smedt, Bert; Janssen, Rianne; Bouwens, Kelly; Verschaffel, Lieven; Boets, Bart; Ghesquiere, Pol
2009-01-01
This longitudinal study examined the relationship between working memory and individual differences in mathematics. Working memory measures, comprising the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive, were administered at the start of first grade. Mathematics achievement was assessed 4 months later (at the middle of…
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The Cognitive and Behavioral Characteristics of Children with Low Working Memory
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alloway, Tracy Packiam; Gathercole, Susan Elizabeth; Kirkwood, Hannah; Elliott, Julian
2009-01-01
This study explored the cognitive and behavioral profiles of children with working memory impairments. In an initial screening of 3,189 five- to eleven-year-olds, 308 were identified as having very low working memory scores. Cognitive skills (IQ, vocabulary, reading, and math), classroom behavior, and self-esteem were assessed. The majority of the…
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The Structure of Working Memory from 4 to 15 Years of Age
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gathercole, Susan E.; Pickering, Susan J.; Ambridge, Benjamin; Wearing, Hannah
2004-01-01
The structure of working memory and its development across the childhood years were investigated in children 4-15 years of age. The children were given multiple assessments of each component of the A. D. Baddeley and G. Hitch (1974) working memory model. Broadly similar linear functions characterized performance on all measures as a function of…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lusk, Danielle L.; Evans, Amber D.; Jeffrey, Thomas R.; Palmer, Keith R.; Wikstrom, Chris S.; Doolittle, Peter E.
2009-01-01
Research in multimedia learning lacks an emphasis on individual difference variables, such as working memory capacity (WMC). The effects of WMC and the segmentation of multimedia instruction were examined by assessing the recall and application of low (n = 66) and high (n = 67) working memory capacity students randomly assigned to either a…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alderson, R. Matt; Rapport, Mark D.; Hudec, Kristen L.; Sarver, Dustin E.; Kofler, Michael J.
2010-01-01
The current study examined competing predictions of the working memory and behavioral inhibition models of ADHD. Behavioral inhibition was measured using a conventional stop-signal task, and central executive, phonological, and visuospatial working memory components (Baddeley 2007) were assessed in 14 children with ADHD and 13 typically developing…
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Working Memory Training in Young Children with ADHD: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dongen-Boomsma, Martine; Vollebregt, Madelon A.; Buitelaar, Jan K.; Slaats-Willemse, Dorine
2014-01-01
Background: Until now, working memory training has not reached sufficient evidence as effective treatment for ADHD core symptoms in children with ADHD; for young children with ADHD, no studies are available. To this end, a triple-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study was designed to assess the efficacy of Cogmed Working Memory Training…
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Arime, Yosefu; Akiyama, Kazufumi
2017-01-01
Working memory impairment is a hallmark feature of schizophrenia and is thought be caused by dysfunctions in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and associated brain regions. However, the neural circuit anomalies underlying this impairment are poorly understood. The aim of this study is to assess working memory performance in the chronic phencyclidine (PCP) mouse model of schizophrenia, and to identify the neural substrates of working memory. To address this issue, we conducted the following experiments for mice after withdrawal from chronic administration (14 days) of either saline or PCP (10 mg/kg): (1) a discrete paired-trial variable-delay task in T-maze to assess working memory, and (2) brain-wide c-Fos mapping to identify activated brain regions relevant to this task performance either 90 min or 0 min after the completion of the task, with each time point examined under working memory effort and basal conditions. Correct responses in the test phase of the task were significantly reduced across delays (5, 15, and 30 s) in chronic PCP-treated mice compared with chronic saline-treated controls, suggesting delay-independent impairments in working memory in the PCP group. In layer 2-3 of the prelimbic cortex, the number of working memory effort-elicited c-Fos+ cells was significantly higher in the chronic PCP group than in the chronic saline group. The main effect of working memory effort relative to basal conditions was to induce significantly increased c-Fos+ cells in the other layers of prelimbic cortex and the anterior cingulate and infralimbic cortex regardless of the different chronic regimens. Conversely, this working memory effort had a negative effect (fewer c-Fos+ cells) in the ventral hippocampus. These results shed light on some putative neural networks relevant to working memory impairments in mice chronically treated with PCP, and emphasize the importance of the layer 2-3 of the prelimbic cortex of the PFC.
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Akiyama, Kazufumi
2017-01-01
Working memory impairment is a hallmark feature of schizophrenia and is thought be caused by dysfunctions in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and associated brain regions. However, the neural circuit anomalies underlying this impairment are poorly understood. The aim of this study is to assess working memory performance in the chronic phencyclidine (PCP) mouse model of schizophrenia, and to identify the neural substrates of working memory. To address this issue, we conducted the following experiments for mice after withdrawal from chronic administration (14 days) of either saline or PCP (10 mg/kg): (1) a discrete paired-trial variable-delay task in T-maze to assess working memory, and (2) brain-wide c-Fos mapping to identify activated brain regions relevant to this task performance either 90 min or 0 min after the completion of the task, with each time point examined under working memory effort and basal conditions. Correct responses in the test phase of the task were significantly reduced across delays (5, 15, and 30 s) in chronic PCP-treated mice compared with chronic saline-treated controls, suggesting delay-independent impairments in working memory in the PCP group. In layer 2–3 of the prelimbic cortex, the number of working memory effort-elicited c-Fos+ cells was significantly higher in the chronic PCP group than in the chronic saline group. The main effect of working memory effort relative to basal conditions was to induce significantly increased c-Fos+ cells in the other layers of prelimbic cortex and the anterior cingulate and infralimbic cortex regardless of the different chronic regimens. Conversely, this working memory effort had a negative effect (fewer c-Fos+ cells) in the ventral hippocampus. These results shed light on some putative neural networks relevant to working memory impairments in mice chronically treated with PCP, and emphasize the importance of the layer 2–3 of the prelimbic cortex of the PFC. PMID:29253020
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The Episodic Buffer in Children with Intellectual Disabilities: An Exploratory Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Henry, Lucy A.
2010-01-01
Performance on three verbal measures (story recall, paired associated learning, category fluency) designed to assess the integration of long-term semantic and linguistic knowledge, phonological working memory and executive resources within the proposed "episodic buffer" of working memory (Baddeley, 2007) was assessed in children with intellectual…
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Lotfi, Yones; Mehrkian, Saiedeh; Moossavi, Abdollah; Zadeh, Soghrat Faghih; Sadjedi, Hamed
2016-01-01
Background: This study assessed the relationship between working memory capacity and auditory stream segregation by using the concurrent minimum audible angle in children with a diagnosed auditory processing disorder (APD). Methods: The participants in this cross-sectional, comparative study were 20 typically developing children and 15 children with a diagnosed APD (age, 9–11 years) according to the subtests of multiple-processing auditory assessment. Auditory stream segregation was investigated using the concurrent minimum audible angle. Working memory capacity was evaluated using the non-word repetition and forward and backward digit span tasks. Nonparametric statistics were utilized to compare the between-group differences. The Pearson correlation was employed to measure the degree of association between working memory capacity and the localization tests between the 2 groups. Results: The group with APD had significantly lower scores than did the typically developing subjects in auditory stream segregation and working memory capacity. There were significant negative correlations between working memory capacity and the concurrent minimum audible angle in the most frontal reference location (0° azimuth) and lower negative correlations in the most lateral reference location (60° azimuth) in the children with APD. Conclusion: The study revealed a relationship between working memory capacity and auditory stream segregation in children with APD. The research suggests that lower working memory capacity in children with APD may be the possible cause of the inability to segregate and group incoming information. PMID:26989281
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Herrera-Guzmán, Ixchel; Gudayol-Ferré, Esteve; Herrera-Guzmán, Daniel; Guàrdia-Olmos, Joan; Hinojosa-Calvo, Erika; Herrera-Abarca, Jorge E
2009-06-01
Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) usually suffer from altered cognitive functions of episodic memory, working memory, mental processing speed and motor response. Diverse studies suggest that different antidepressant agents may improve cognitive functions in patients with MDD. The aim of this work is to study the effects of serotonergic reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonergic-noradrenergic reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) treatments to improve the performance on memory tasks and mental processing speed in MDD. Seventy-three subjects meeting criteria for major depressive disorder were assessed with the Hamilton depression rating scale and a neuropsychological battery. The subjects were medicated with escitalopram (n=36) or duloxetine (n=37) for 24 weeks. At the end of the trial, the subjects were assessed again with the same neuropsychological battery used prior to the treatment. Both treatments improved importantly the episodic memory and to a lesser extent, working memory, mental processing speed and motor performance. Our results suggest that cognition is partially independent from improvement in clinical symptoms. Both groups achieved remission rates in the HAM-D-17 after 24 weeks of treatment, but SNRI was superior to SSRI at improving episodic and working memory. Our work indicates that the superiority of SNRI over the SSRI at episodic memory improvement is clinically relevant.
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Working memory capacity predicts listwise directed forgetting in adults and children.
Aslan, Alp; Zellner, Martina; Bäuml, Karl-Heinz T
2010-05-01
In listwise directed forgetting, participants are cued to forget previously studied material and to learn new material instead. Such cueing typically leads to forgetting of the first set of material and to memory enhancement of the second. The present study examined the role of working memory capacity in adults' and children's listwise directed forgetting. Working memory capacity was assessed with complex span tasks. In Experiment 1 working memory capacity predicted young adults' directed-forgetting performance, demonstrating a positive relationship between working memory capacity and each of the two directed-forgetting effects. In Experiment 2 we replicated the finding with a sample of first and a sample of fourth-grade children, and additionally showed that working memory capacity can account for age-related increases in directed-forgetting efficiency between the two age groups. Following the view that directed forgetting is mediated by inhibition of the first encoded list, the results support the proposal of a close link between working memory capacity and inhibitory function.
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SUBJECTIVE MEMORY IN OLDER AFRICAN AMERICANS
Sims, Regina C.; Whitfield, Keith E.; Ayotte, Brian J.; Gamaldo, Alyssa A.; Edwards, Christopher L.; Allaire, Jason C.
2013-01-01
The current analysis examined (a) if measures of psychological well-being predict subjective memory, and (b) if subjective memory is consistent with actual memory. Five hundred seventy-nine older African Americans from the Baltimore Study of Black Aging completed measures assessing subjective memory, depressive symptomatology, perceived stress, locus of control, and verbal and working memory. Higher levels of perceived stress and greater externalized locus of control predicted poorer subjective memory, but subjective memory did not predict objective verbal or working memory. Results suggest that subjective memory is influenced by aspects of psychological well-being but is unrelated to objective memory in older African Americans. PMID:21424958
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Garcia, Lucy; Nussbaum, Miguel; Preiss, David D.
2011-01-01
The main purpose of this study was to assess whether seventh-grade students use of information and communication technology (ICT) was related to performance on working memory tasks. In addition, the study tested whether the relationship between ICT use and performance on working memory tasks interacted with seventh-grade students' socioeconomic…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stevenson, Claire E.; Bergwerff, Catharina E.; Heiser, Willem J.; Resing, Wilma C. M.
2014-01-01
Working memory and inductive reasoning ability each appear related to children's achievement in math and reading. Dynamic measures of reasoning, based on an assessment procedure including feedback, may provide additional predictive value. The aim of this study was to investigate whether working memory and dynamic measures of analogical…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alptekin, Cem; Ercetin, Gulcan
2009-01-01
Although an important role has been ascribed to working-memory capacity in reading comprehension, little consensus exists on its conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement except for its recognition as a limited-capacity processing and storage system. One specific problem in the measurement of working memory comes from researchers' use…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mammarella, Irene C.; Cornoldi, Cesare; Pazzaglia, Francesca; Toso, Cristina; Grimoldi, Mario; Vio, Claudio
2006-01-01
The paper describes the performance of three children with specific visuospatial working memory (VSWM) impairments (Study 1) and three children with visuospatial (nonverbal) learning disabilities (Study 2) assessed with a battery of working memory (WM) tests and with a number of school achievement tasks. Overall, performance on WM tests provides…
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Assessment of Attentional Workload while Driving by Eye-fixation-related Potentials
NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Takeda, Yuji; Yoshitsugu, Noritoshi; Itoh, Kazuya; Kanamori, Nobuhiro
How do drivers cope with the attentional workload of in-vehicle information technology? In the present study, we propose a new psychophysiological measure for assessing drivers' attention: eye-fixation-related potential (EFRP). EFRP is a kind of event-related brain potential measurable at the eye-movement situation that reflects how closely observers examine visual information at the eye-fixated position. In the experiment, the effects of verbal working memory load and spatial working memory load during simulated driving were examined by measuring the number of saccadic eye-movements and EFRP as the indices of drivers' attention. The results showed that the spatial working memory load affected both the number of saccadic eye-movements and the amplitude of the P100 component of EFRP, whereas the verbal working memory load affected only the number of saccadic eye-movements. This implies that drivers can perform time-sharing processing between driving and the verbal working memory task, but the decline of accuracy of visual processing during driving is inescapable when the spatial working memory load is given. The present study suggests that EFRP can provide a new index of drivers' attention, other than saccadic eye-movements.
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Working memory training improves emotion regulation ability: Evidence from HRV.
Xiu, Lichao; Zhou, Renlai; Jiang, Yihan
2016-03-01
Emotion regulation during social situations plays a pivotal role in health and interpersonal functioning. In this study, we propose a working memory training approach to improve emotion regulation ability. This training promotes an updating function that is a crucial modulated process for emotion regulation. In the present study, the participants in the training group completed a running memory task over 20 days of training. Their working memory capability and high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) data on pretest and posttest were assessed and analyzed. Compared with the control group, the training group's reaction time in the 2-back working memory task was reduced significantly. In addition, the HF-HRV in the emotion regulation condition was increased after the 20-day training, which indicates that the working memory training effect could transfer to emotion regulation. In other words, working memory training improved emotion regulation ability. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Wang, Manjie; Saudino, Kimberly J
2013-12-01
This is the first study to explore genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in emotion regulation in toddlers, and the first to examine the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the association between emotion regulation and working memory. In a sample of 304 same-sex twin pairs (140 MZ, 164 DZ) at age 3, emotion regulation was assessed using the Behavior Rating Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BRS; Bayley, 1993), and working memory was measured by the visually cued recall (VCR) task (Zelazo, Jacques, Burack, & Frye, 2002) and several memory tasks from the Mental Scale of the BSID. Based on model-fitting analyses, both emotion regulation and working memory were significantly influenced by genetic and nonshared environmental factors. Shared environmental effects were significant for working memory, but not for emotion regulation. Only genetic factors significantly contributed to the covariation between emotion regulation and working memory.
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Wang, Manjie; Saudino, Kimberly J.
2014-01-01
This is the first study to explore genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in emotion regulation in toddlers, and the first to examine the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the association between emotion regulation and working memory. In a sample of 304 same-sex twin pairs (140 MZ, 164 DZ) at age 3, emotion regulation was assessed using the Behavior Rating Scale of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BRS; Bayley, 1993), and working memory was measured by the visually cued recall (VCR) task (Zelazo et al., 2002) and several memory tasks from the Mental Scale of BSID. Based on model-fitting analyses, both emotion regulation and working memory were significantly influenced by genetic and nonshared environmental factors. Shared environmental effects were significant for working memory, but not for emotion regulation. Only genetic factors significantly contributed to the covariation between emotion regulation and working memory. PMID:24098922
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Working Memory Components and Problem-Solving Accuracy: Are There Multiple Pathways?
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Swanson, H. Lee; Fung, Wenson
2016-01-01
This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological short-term memory [STM], and visual-spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy in elementary schoolchildren (N = 392). The battery of tests administered to assess mediators between WM and problem-solving included measures of…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Henry, Lucy A.; Messer, David J.; Nash, Gilly
2014-01-01
A relatively quick, face-to-face, adaptive working memory training intervention was assessed in 5-to 8-year-old typically developing children, randomly allocated to a 6-week intervention condition, or an active control condition. All children received 18 sessions of 10?minutes, three times/week for 6?weeks. Assessments of six working memory…
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Exploring Expressive Vocabulary Variability in Two-Year-Olds: The Role of Working Memory.
Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F; Moran, Catherine
2015-12-01
This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working memory and phonological short-term memory. Strong correlations were observed between phonological short-term memory, verbal working memory, and expressive vocabulary. Speed of spoken word recognition showed a moderate significant correlation with expressive vocabulary. In a multivariate regression model for expressive vocabulary, the most powerful predictor was a measure of phonological short-term memory (accounting for 66% unique variance), followed by verbal working memory (6%), sex (2%), and age (1%). Processing speed did not add significant unique variance. These findings confirm previous research positing a strong role for phonological short-term memory in early expressive vocabulary acquisition. They also extend previous research in two ways. First, a unique association between verbal working memory and expressive vocabulary in 2-year-olds was observed. Second, processing speed was not a unique predictor of variance in expressive vocabulary when included alongside measures of working memory.
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Prospective memory, level of disability, and return to work in severe mental illness.
Burton, Cynthia Z; Vella, Lea; Twamley, Elizabeth W
2018-02-25
Prospective memory (the ability to remember to do things) has clear implications for everyday functioning, including employment, in people with severe mental illnesses (SMI). This study aimed to evaluate prospective memory performance and its relationship to real-world functional variables in an employment-seeking sample of people with SMI (Clinical Trial registration number NCT00895258). 153 individuals with DSM-IV diagnosis of depression (n = 58), bipolar disorder (n = 37), or schizophrenia (n = 58) who were receiving outpatient psychiatric care at a university clinic enrolled in a trial of supported employment and completed a baseline assessment. Prospective memory was measured with the Memory for Intentions Test (MIST); real-world functional status included work history variables, clinical history variables, baseline functional capacity (UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment-Brief), and work outcomes (weeks worked and wages earned during two years of supported employment). Participants with schizophrenia performed worse on the MIST than did those with affective disorders. Independent of diagnosis, education, and estimated intellectual functioning, prospective memory significantly predicted variance in measures of disability and illness burden (disability benefits, hospitalization history, current functional capacity), and work outcomes over two years of supported employment (weeks worked). Worse prospective memory appears to be associated with greater illness burden and functional disability in SMI. Mental health clinicians and employment specialists may counsel clients to use compensatory prospective memory strategies to improve work performance and decrease functional disability associated with SMI.
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Executive functions predict conceptual learning of science.
Rhodes, Sinéad M; Booth, Josephine N; Palmer, Lorna Elise; Blythe, Richard A; Delibegovic, Mirela; Wheate, Nial J
2016-06-01
We examined the relationship between executive functions and both factual and conceptual learning of science, specifically chemistry, in early adolescence. Sixty-three pupils in their second year of secondary school (aged 12-13 years) participated. Pupils completed tasks of working memory (Spatial Working Memory), inhibition (Stop-Signal), attention set-shifting (ID/ED), and planning (Stockings of Cambridge), from the CANTAB. They also participated in a chemistry teaching session, practical, and assessment on the topic of acids and alkalis designed specifically for this study. Executive function data were related to (1) the chemistry assessment which included aspects of factual and conceptual learning and (2) a recent school science exam. Correlational analyses between executive functions and both the chemistry assessment and science grades revealed that science achievements were significantly correlated with working memory. Linear regression analysis revealed that visuospatial working memory ability was predictive of chemistry performance. Interestingly, this relationship was observed solely in relation to the conceptual learning condition of the assessment highlighting the role of executive functions in understanding and applying knowledge about what is learned within science teaching. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.
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The role of working memory in decoding emotions.
Phillips, Louise H; Channon, Shelley; Tunstall, Mary; Hedenstrom, Anna; Lyons, Kathryn
2008-04-01
Decoding facial expressions of emotion is an important aspect of social communication that is often impaired following psychiatric or neurological illness. However, little is known of the cognitive components involved in perceiving emotional expressions. Three dual task studies explored the role of verbal working memory in decoding emotions. Concurrent working memory load substantially interfered with choosing which emotional label described a facial expression (Experiment 1). A key factor in the magnitude of interference was the number of emotion labels from which to choose (Experiment 2). In contrast the ability to decide that two faces represented the same emotion in a discrimination task was relatively unaffected by concurrent working memory load (Experiment 3). Different methods of assessing emotion perception make substantially different demands on working memory. Implications for clinical disorders which affect both working memory and emotion perception are considered. (Copyright) 2008 APA.
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Improving working memory in children with low language abilities
Holmes, Joni; Butterfield, Sally; Cormack, Francesca; van Loenhoud, Anita; Ruggero, Leanne; Kashikar, Linda; Gathercole, Susan
2015-01-01
This study investigated whether working memory training is effective in enhancing verbal memory in children with low language abilities (LLA). Cogmed Working Memory Training was completed by a community sample of children aged 8–11 years with LLA and a comparison group with matched non-verbal abilities and age-typical language performance. Short-term memory (STM), working memory, language, and IQ were assessed before and after training. Significant and equivalent post-training gains were found in visuo-spatial short-term memory in both groups. Exploratory analyses across the sample established that low verbal IQ scores were strongly and highly specifically associated with greater gains in verbal STM, and that children with higher verbal IQs made greater gains in visuo-spatial short-term memory following training. This provides preliminary evidence that intensive working memory training may be effective for enhancing the weakest aspects of STM in children with low verbal abilities, and may also be of value in developing compensatory strategies. PMID:25983703
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cockcroft, Kate
2016-01-01
This study compared bilingual and monolingual school beginners on measures of simple and complex verbal working memory and receptive and expressive vocabulary. The aim was to determine whether the tests of working memory are fairer measures of language ability than the vocabulary tests for bilingual children when tested in their second language.…
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2016-05-31
auditory working memory task to vary cognitive workload by altering the number of digits held in memory during the simultaneous retention of a sentence...in memory . Cognitive efficacy is assessed based on accuracy in recalling digits from memory . A Gaussian classifier is used to discriminate cognitive...effectiveness of cognition under the existing load. One major factor that impacts cognitive load is the amount of working memory required in a task
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Sweeney, Mary M.; Rass, Olga; Johnson, Patrick S.; Strain, Eric C.; Berry, Meredith S.; Vo, Hoa T.; Fishman, Marc J.; Munro, Cynthia A.; Rebok, George W.; Mintzer, Miriam Z.; Johnson, Matthew W.
2016-01-01
Individuals with substance use disorders have shown deficits in the ability to implement future intentions, called prospective memory. Deficits in prospective memory and working memory, a critical underlying component of prospective memory, likely contribute to substance use treatment failures. Thus, improvement of prospective memory and working memory in substance use patients is an innovative target for intervention. We sought to develop a feasible and valid prospective memory training program that incorporates working memory training and may serve as a useful adjunct to substance use disorder treatment. We administered a single session of the novel prospective memory and working memory training program to participants (n = 22; 13 male; 9 female) enrolled in outpatient substance use disorder treatment and correlated performance to existing measures of prospective memory and working memory. Generally accurate prospective memory performance in a single session suggests feasibility in a substance use treatment population. However, training difficulty should be increased to avoid ceiling effects across repeated sessions. Consistent with existing literature, we observed superior performance on event-based relative to time-based prospective memory tasks. Performance on the prospective memory and working memory training components correlated with validated assessments of prospective memory and working memory, respectively. Correlations between novel memory training program performance and established measures suggest that our training engages appropriate cognitive processes. Further, differential event- and time-based prospective memory task performance suggests internal validity of our training. These data support development of this intervention as an adjunctive therapy for substance use disorders. PMID:27690506
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Sweeney, Mary M; Rass, Olga; Johnson, Patrick S; Strain, Eric C; Berry, Meredith S; Vo, Hoa T; Fishman, Marc J; Munro, Cynthia A; Rebok, George W; Mintzer, Miriam Z; Johnson, Matthew W
2016-10-01
Individuals with substance use disorders have shown deficits in the ability to implement future intentions, called prospective memory. Deficits in prospective memory and working memory, a critical underlying component of prospective memory, likely contribute to substance use treatment failures. Thus, improvement of prospective memory and working memory in substance use patients is an innovative target for intervention. We sought to develop a feasible and valid prospective memory training program that incorporates working memory training and may serve as a useful adjunct to substance use disorder treatment. We administered a single session of the novel prospective memory and working memory training program to participants (n = 22; 13 men, 9 women) enrolled in outpatient substance use disorder treatment and correlated performance to existing measures of prospective memory and working memory. Generally accurate prospective memory performance in a single session suggests feasibility in a substance use treatment population. However, training difficulty should be increased to avoid ceiling effects across repeated sessions. Consistent with existing literature, we observed superior performance on event-based relative to time-based prospective memory tasks. Performance on the prospective memory and working memory training components correlated with validated assessments of prospective memory and working memory, respectively. Correlations between novel memory training program performance and established measures suggest that our training engages appropriate cognitive processes. Further, differential event- and time-based prospective memory task performance suggests internal validity of our training. These data support the development of this intervention as an adjunctive therapy for substance use disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).
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Betancourt, Laura M; Yang, Wei; Brodsky, Nancy L; Gallagher, Paul R; Malmud, Elsa K; Giannetta, Joan M; Farah, Martha J; Hurt, Hallam
2011-01-01
Preclinical studies of gestational cocaine exposure (GCE) show evidence of changes in brain function at the anatomical, physiological, and behavioral levels, to include effects on developing dopaminergic systems. In contrast, human studies have produced less consistent results, with most showing small effects or no effects on developmental outcomes. Important changes in brain structure and function occur through adolescence, therefore it is possible that prenatal cocaine exposure has latent effects on neurocognitive (NC) outcome that do not manifest until adolescence or young adulthood. We examined NC function using a set of 5 tasks designed to tap 4 different systems: inhibitory control, working memory, receptive language, and incidental memory. For each NC task, data were collected longitudinally at ages 12, 14.5 and 17 years and examined using generalized estimating equations. One hundred and nine children completed at least two of the three evaluations. Covariates included in the final model were assessment number, gender, participant age at first assessment, caregiver depression, and two composites from the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME), Environmental Stimulation and Parental Nurturance. We found no cocaine effects on inhibitory control, working memory, or receptive language (p=0.18). GCE effects were observed on incidental face memory task (p=0.055), and GCE by assessment number interaction effects were seen on the incidental word memory task (p=0.031). Participant performance on inhibitory control, working memory, and receptive language tasks improved over time. HOME Environmental Stimulation composite was associated with better receptive language functioning. With a larger sample size smaller differences between groups may have been detected. This report shows no evidence of latent effects of GCE on inhibitory control, working memory, or receptive language. GCE effects were observed on the incidental face memory task, and GCE by assessment number interaction effects was seen on the incidental word memory task. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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The sensory strength of voluntary visual imagery predicts visual working memory capacity.
Keogh, Rebecca; Pearson, Joel
2014-10-09
How much we can actively hold in mind is severely limited and differs greatly from one person to the next. Why some individuals have greater capacities than others is largely unknown. Here, we investigated why such large variations in visual working memory (VWM) capacity might occur, by examining the relationship between visual working memory and visual mental imagery. To assess visual working memory capacity participants were required to remember the orientation of a number of Gabor patches and make subsequent judgments about relative changes in orientation. The sensory strength of voluntary imagery was measured using a previously documented binocular rivalry paradigm. Participants with greater imagery strength also had greater visual working memory capacity. However, they were no better on a verbal number working memory task. Introducing a uniform luminous background during the retention interval of the visual working memory task reduced memory capacity, but only for those with strong imagery. Likewise, for the good imagers increasing background luminance during imagery generation reduced its effect on subsequent binocular rivalry. Luminance increases did not affect any of the subgroups on the verbal number working memory task. Together, these results suggest that luminance was disrupting sensory mechanisms common to both visual working memory and imagery, and not a general working memory system. The disruptive selectivity of background luminance suggests that good imagers, unlike moderate or poor imagers, may use imagery as a mnemonic strategy to perform the visual working memory task. © 2014 ARVO.
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Mutation of Dcdc2 in mice leads to impairments in auditory processing and memory ability.
Truong, D T; Che, A; Rendall, A R; Szalkowski, C E; LoTurco, J J; Galaburda, A M; Holly Fitch, R
2014-11-01
Dyslexia is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired reading ability despite normal intellect, and is associated with specific difficulties in phonological and rapid auditory processing (RAP), visual attention and working memory. Genetic variants in Doublecortin domain-containing protein 2 (DCDC2) have been associated with dyslexia, impairments in phonological processing and in short-term/working memory. The purpose of this study was to determine whether sensory and behavioral impairments can result directly from mutation of the Dcdc2 gene in mice. Several behavioral tasks, including a modified pre-pulse inhibition paradigm (to examine auditory processing), a 4/8 radial arm maze (to assess/dissociate working vs. reference memory) and rotarod (to examine sensorimotor ability and motor learning), were used to assess the effects of Dcdc2 mutation. Behavioral results revealed deficits in RAP, working memory and reference memory in Dcdc2(del2/del2) mice when compared with matched wild types. Current findings parallel clinical research linking genetic variants of DCDC2 with specific impairments of phonological processing and memory ability. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society.
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Working memory and organizational skills problems in ADHD.
Kofler, Michael J; Sarver, Dustin E; Harmon, Sherelle L; Moltisanti, Allison; Aduen, Paula A; Soto, Elia F; Ferretti, Nicole
2018-01-01
This study tested model-driven predictions regarding working memory's role in the organizational problems associated with ADHD. Children aged 8-13 (M = 10.33, SD = 1.42) with and without ADHD (N = 103; 39 girls; 73% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic) were assessed on multiple, counterbalanced working memory tasks. Parents and teachers completed norm-referenced measures of organizational problems (Children's Organizational Skills Scale; COSS). Results confirmed large magnitude working memory deficits (d = 1.24) and organizational problems in ADHD (d = 0.85). Bias-corrected, bootstrapped conditional effects models linked impaired working memory with greater parent- and teacher-reported inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and organizational problems. Working memory predicted organization problems across all parent and teacher COSS subscales (R 2 = .19-.23). Approximately 38%-57% of working memory's effect on organization problems was conveyed by working memory's association with inattentive behavior. Unique effects of working memory remained significant for both parent- and teacher-reported task planning, as well as for teacher-reported memory/materials management and overall organization problems. Attention problems uniquely predicted worse organizational skills. Hyperactivity was unrelated to parent-reported organizational skills, but predicted better teacher-reported task planning. Children with ADHD exhibit multisetting, broad-based organizational impairment. These impaired organizational skills are attributable in part to performance deficits secondary to working memory dysfunction, both directly and indirectly via working memory's role in regulating attention. Impaired working memory in ADHD renders it extraordinarily difficult for these children to consistently anticipate, plan, enact, and maintain goal-directed actions. © 2017 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
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Working, declarative and procedural memory in specific language impairment
Lum, Jarrad A.G.; Conti-Ramsden, Gina; Page, Debra; Ullman, Michael T.
2012-01-01
According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), abnormalities of brain structures underlying procedural memory largely explain the language deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI). These abnormalities are posited to result in core deficits of procedural memory, which in turn explain the grammar problems in the disorder. The abnormalities are also likely to lead to problems with other, non-procedural functions, such as working memory, that rely at least partly on the affected brain structures. In contrast, declarative memory is expected to remain largely intact, and should play an important compensatory role for grammar. These claims were tested by examining measures of working, declarative and procedural memory in 51 children with SLI and 51 matched typically-developing (TD) children (mean age 10). Working memory was assessed with the Working Memory Test Battery for Children, declarative memory with the Children’s Memory Scale, and procedural memory with a visuo-spatial Serial Reaction Time task. As compared to the TD children, the children with SLI were impaired at procedural memory, even when holding working memory constant. In contrast, they were spared at declarative memory for visual information, and at declarative memory in the verbal domain after controlling for working memory and language. Visuo-spatial short-term memory was intact, whereas verbal working memory was impaired, even when language deficits were held constant. Correlation analyses showed neither visuo-spatial nor verbal working memory was associated with either lexical or grammatical abilities in either the SLI or TD children. Declarative memory correlated with lexical abilities in both groups of children. Finally, grammatical abilities were associated with procedural memory in the TD children, but with declarative memory in the children with SLI. These findings replicate and extend previous studies of working, declarative and procedural memory in SLI. Overall, we suggest that the evidence largely supports the predictions of the PDH. PMID:21774923
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Dempere-Marco, Laura; Melcher, David P; Deco, Gustavo
2012-01-01
The study of working memory capacity is of outmost importance in cognitive psychology as working memory is at the basis of general cognitive function. Although the working memory capacity limit has been thoroughly studied, its origin still remains a matter of strong debate. Only recently has the role of visual saliency in modulating working memory storage capacity been assessed experimentally and proved to provide valuable insights into working memory function. In the computational arena, attractor networks have successfully accounted for psychophysical and neurophysiological data in numerous working memory tasks given their ability to produce a sustained elevated firing rate during a delay period. Here we investigate the mechanisms underlying working memory capacity by means of a biophysically-realistic attractor network with spiking neurons while accounting for two recent experimental observations: 1) the presence of a visually salient item reduces the number of items that can be held in working memory, and 2) visually salient items are commonly kept in memory at the cost of not keeping as many non-salient items. Our model suggests that working memory capacity is determined by two fundamental processes: encoding of visual items into working memory and maintenance of the encoded items upon their removal from the visual display. While maintenance critically depends on the constraints that lateral inhibition imposes to the mnemonic activity, encoding is limited by the ability of the stimulated neural assemblies to reach a sufficiently high level of excitation, a process governed by the dynamics of competition and cooperation among neuronal pools. Encoding is therefore contingent upon the visual working memory task and has led us to introduce the concept of effective working memory capacity (eWMC) in contrast to the maximal upper capacity limit only reached under ideal conditions.
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Dempere-Marco, Laura; Melcher, David P.; Deco, Gustavo
2012-01-01
The study of working memory capacity is of outmost importance in cognitive psychology as working memory is at the basis of general cognitive function. Although the working memory capacity limit has been thoroughly studied, its origin still remains a matter of strong debate. Only recently has the role of visual saliency in modulating working memory storage capacity been assessed experimentally and proved to provide valuable insights into working memory function. In the computational arena, attractor networks have successfully accounted for psychophysical and neurophysiological data in numerous working memory tasks given their ability to produce a sustained elevated firing rate during a delay period. Here we investigate the mechanisms underlying working memory capacity by means of a biophysically-realistic attractor network with spiking neurons while accounting for two recent experimental observations: 1) the presence of a visually salient item reduces the number of items that can be held in working memory, and 2) visually salient items are commonly kept in memory at the cost of not keeping as many non-salient items. Our model suggests that working memory capacity is determined by two fundamental processes: encoding of visual items into working memory and maintenance of the encoded items upon their removal from the visual display. While maintenance critically depends on the constraints that lateral inhibition imposes to the mnemonic activity, encoding is limited by the ability of the stimulated neural assemblies to reach a sufficiently high level of excitation, a process governed by the dynamics of competition and cooperation among neuronal pools. Encoding is therefore contingent upon the visual working memory task and has led us to introduce the concept of effective working memory capacity (eWMC) in contrast to the maximal upper capacity limit only reached under ideal conditions. PMID:22952608
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Tao, Duoduo; Deng, Rui; Jiang, Ye; Galvin, John J; Fu, Qian-Jie; Chen, Bing
2014-01-01
To investigate how auditory working memory relates to speech perception performance by Mandarin-speaking cochlear implant (CI) users. Auditory working memory and speech perception was measured in Mandarin-speaking CI and normal-hearing (NH) participants. Working memory capacity was measured using forward digit span and backward digit span; working memory efficiency was measured using articulation rate. Speech perception was assessed with: (a) word-in-sentence recognition in quiet, (b) word-in-sentence recognition in speech-shaped steady noise at +5 dB signal-to-noise ratio, (c) Chinese disyllable recognition in quiet, (d) Chinese lexical tone recognition in quiet. Self-reported school rank was also collected regarding performance in schoolwork. There was large inter-subject variability in auditory working memory and speech performance for CI participants. Working memory and speech performance were significantly poorer for CI than for NH participants. All three working memory measures were strongly correlated with each other for both CI and NH participants. Partial correlation analyses were performed on the CI data while controlling for demographic variables. Working memory efficiency was significantly correlated only with sentence recognition in quiet when working memory capacity was partialled out. Working memory capacity was correlated with disyllable recognition and school rank when efficiency was partialled out. There was no correlation between working memory and lexical tone recognition in the present CI participants. Mandarin-speaking CI users experience significant deficits in auditory working memory and speech performance compared with NH listeners. The present data suggest that auditory working memory may contribute to CI users' difficulties in speech understanding. The present pattern of results with Mandarin-speaking CI users is consistent with previous auditory working memory studies with English-speaking CI users, suggesting that the lexical importance of voice pitch cues (albeit poorly coded by the CI) did not influence the relationship between working memory and speech perception.
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Assessment of Working Memory Capacity in Preschool Children Using the Missing Scan Task
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Roman, Adrienne S.; Pisoni, David B.; Kronenberger, William G.
2014-01-01
The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility and validity of a modified version of Buschke's missing scan methodology, the Missing Scan Task (MST), to assess working memory capacity (WMC) and cognitive control processes in preschool children 3-6?years in age. Forty typically developing monolingual English-speaking children between…
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Rapport, Mark D; Alderson, R Matt; Kofler, Michael J; Sarver, Dustin E; Bolden, Jennifer; Sims, Valerie
2008-08-01
The current study investigated contradictory findings from recent experimental and meta-analytic studies concerning working memory deficits in ADHD. Working memory refers to the cognitive ability to temporarily store and mentally manipulate limited amounts of information for use in guiding behavior. Phonological (verbal) and visuospatial (nonverbal) working memory were assessed across four memory load conditions in 23 boys (12 ADHD, 11 typically developing) using tasks based on Baddeley's (Working memory, thought, and action, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007) working memory model. The model posits separate phonological and visuospatial storage and rehearsal components that are controlled by a single attentional controller (CE: central executive). A latent variable approach was used to partial task performance related to three variables of interest: phonological buffer/rehearsal loop, visuospatial buffer/rehearsal loop, and the CE attentional controller. ADHD-related working memory deficits were apparent across all three cognitive systems--with the largest magnitude of deficits apparent in the CE--even after controlling for reading speed, nonverbal visual encoding, age, IQ, and SES.
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Count on dopamine: influences of COMT polymorphisms on numerical cognition
Júlio-Costa, Annelise; Antunes, Andressa M.; Lopes-Silva, Júlia B.; Moreira, Bárbara C.; Vianna, Gabrielle S.; Wood, Guilherme; Carvalho, Maria R. S.; Haase, Vitor G.
2013-01-01
Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) is an enzyme that is particularly important for the metabolism of dopamine. Functional polymorphisms of COMT have been implicated in working memory and numerical cognition. This is an exploratory study that aims at investigating associations between COMT polymorphisms, working memory, and numerical cognition. Elementary school children from 2th to 6th grades were divided into two groups according to their COMT val158met polymorphism [homozygous for valine allele (n = 61) vs. heterozygous plus methionine homozygous children or met+ group (n = 94)]. Both groups were matched for age and intelligence. Working memory was assessed through digit span and Corsi blocks. Symbolic numerical processing was assessed through transcoding and single-digit word problem tasks. Non-symbolic magnitude comparison and estimation tasks were used to assess number sense. Between-group differences were found in symbolic and non-symbolic numerical tasks, but not in working memory tasks. Children in the met+ group showed better performance in all numerical tasks while val homozygous children presented slower development of non-symbolic magnitude representations. These results suggest COMT-related dopaminergic modulation may be related not only to working memory, as found in previous studies, but also to the development of magnitude processing and magnitude representations. PMID:23966969
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Robinaugh, Donald J; Crane, Margaret E; Enock, Philip M; McNally, Richard J
2016-01-01
Rumination in depressed adults is associated with a bias toward retaining negative information in working memory. We developed a task designed to modify this cognitive bias by having subjects repeatedly practice removing negative words from working memory, thereby enabling them to retain positive and neutral words. To assess the efficacy of this task, we recruited 60 adults who reported elevated repetitive negative thought (RNT) and randomly assigned them to receive a single administration of either the working memory bias modification (WMBM) task or a control task. Subjects in the WMBM condition exhibited greater reduction in proactive interference for negative information than did those in the control condition. These results suggest that the WMBM task reduces biased retention of negative information in working memory and, thus, may be useful in investigating the possible causal role of this cognitive bias in RNT or depression.
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Neurofeedback training of EEG alpha rhythm enhances episodic and working memory.
Hsueh, Jen-Jui; Chen, Tzu-Shan; Chen, Jia-Jin; Shaw, Fu-Zen
2016-07-01
Neurofeedback training (NFT) of the alpha rhythm has been used for several decades but is still controversial in regards to its trainability and effects on working memory. Alpha rhythm of the frontoparietal region are associated with either the intelligence or memory of healthy subjects and are also related to pathological states. In this study, alpha NFT effects on memory performances were explored. Fifty healthy participants were recruited and randomly assigned into a group receiving a 8-12-Hz amplitude (Alpha) or a group receiving a random 4-Hz amplitude from the range of 7 to 20 Hz (Ctrl). Three NFT sessions per week were conducted for 4 weeks. Working memory was assessed by both a backward digit span task and an operation span task, and episodic memory was assessed using a word pair task. Four questionnaires were used to assess anxiety, depression, insomnia, and cognitive function. The Ctrl group had no change in alpha amplitude and duration. In contrast, the Alpha group showed a progressive significant increase in the alpha amplitude and total alpha duration of the frontoparietal region. Accuracies of both working and episodic memories were significantly improved in a large proportion of participants of the Alpha group, particularly for those with remarkable alpha-amplitude increases. Scores of four questionnaires fell in a normal range before and after NFT. The current study provided supporting evidence for alpha trainability within a small session number compared with that of therapy. The findings suggested the enhancement of working and episodic memory through alpha NFT. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2662-2675, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Krajewski, Kristin; Schneider, Wolfgang
2009-01-01
This longitudinal study explored the importance of kindergarten measures of phonological awareness, working memory, and quantity-number competencies (QNC) for predicting mathematical school achievement in third graders (mean age 8 years 8 months). It was found that the impact of phonological awareness and visual-spatial working memory, assessed at…
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Detection of the Number of Changes in a Display in Working Memory
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cowan, Nelson; Hardman, Kyle; Saults, J. Scott; Blume, Christopher L.; Clark, Katherine M.; Sunday, Mackenzie A.
2016-01-01
Here we examine a new task to assess working memory for visual arrays in which the participant must judge how many items changed from a studied array to a test array. As a clue to processing, on some trials in the first 2 experiments, participants carried out a metamemory judgment in which they were to decide how many items were in working memory.…
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Real-time state estimation in a flight simulator using fNIRS.
Gateau, Thibault; Durantin, Gautier; Lancelot, Francois; Scannella, Sebastien; Dehais, Frederic
2015-01-01
Working memory is a key executive function for flying an aircraft. This function is particularly critical when pilots have to recall series of air traffic control instructions. However, working memory limitations may jeopardize flight safety. Since the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) method seems promising for assessing working memory load, our objective is to implement an on-line fNIRS-based inference system that integrates two complementary estimators. The first estimator is a real-time state estimation MACD-based algorithm dedicated to identifying the pilot's instantaneous mental state (not-on-task vs. on-task). It does not require a calibration process to perform its estimation. The second estimator is an on-line SVM-based classifier that is able to discriminate task difficulty (low working memory load vs. high working memory load). These two estimators were tested with 19 pilots who were placed in a realistic flight simulator and were asked to recall air traffic control instructions. We found that the estimated pilot's mental state matched significantly better than chance with the pilot's real state (62% global accuracy, 58% specificity, and 72% sensitivity). The second estimator, dedicated to assessing single trial working memory loads, led to 80% classification accuracy, 72% specificity, and 89% sensitivity. These two estimators establish reusable blocks for further fNIRS-based passive brain computer interface development.
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Focus of Attention in Children's Motor Learning: Examining the Role of Age and Working Memory.
Brocken, J E A; Kal, E C; van der Kamp, J
2016-01-01
The authors investigated the relative effectiveness of different attentional focus instructions on motor learning in primary school children. In addition, we explored whether the effect of attentional focus on motor learning was influenced by children's age and verbal working memory capacity. Novice 8-9-year old children (n = 30) and 11-12-year-old children (n = 30) practiced a golf putting task. For each age group, half the participants received instructions to focus (internally) on the swing of their arm, while the other half was instructed to focus (externally) on the swing of the club. Children's verbal working memory capacity was assessed with the Automated Working Memory Assessment. Consistent with many reports on adult's motor learning, children in the external groups demonstrated greater improvements in putting accuracy than children who practiced with an internal focus. This effect was similar across age groups. Verbal working memory capacity was not found to be predictive of motor learning, neither for children in the internal focus groups nor for children in the external focus groups. In conclusion, primary school children's motor learning is enhanced by external focus instructions compared to internal focus instructions. The purported modulatory roles of children's working memory, attentional capacity, or focus preferences require further investigation.
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Failure of Working Memory Training to Enhance Cognition or Intelligence
Thompson, Todd W.; Waskom, Michael L.; Garel, Keri-Lee A.; Cardenas-Iniguez, Carlos; Reynolds, Gretchen O.; Winter, Rebecca; Chang, Patricia; Pollard, Kiersten; Lala, Nupur; Alvarez, George A.; Gabrieli, John D. E.
2013-01-01
Fluid intelligence is important for successful functioning in the modern world, but much evidence suggests that fluid intelligence is largely immutable after childhood. Recently, however, researchers have reported gains in fluid intelligence after multiple sessions of adaptive working memory training in adults. The current study attempted to replicate and expand those results by administering a broad assessment of cognitive abilities and personality traits to young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive dual n-back working memory training program and comparing their post-training performance on those tests to a matched set of young adults who underwent 20 sessions of an adaptive attentional tracking program. Pre- and post-training measurements of fluid intelligence, standardized intelligence tests, speed of processing, reading skills, and other tests of working memory were assessed. Both training groups exhibited substantial and specific improvements on the trained tasks that persisted for at least 6 months post-training, but no transfer of improvement was observed to any of the non-trained measurements when compared to a third untrained group serving as a passive control. These findings fail to support the idea that adaptive working memory training in healthy young adults enhances working memory capacity in non-trained tasks, fluid intelligence, or other measures of cognitive abilities. PMID:23717453
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Määttä, Sira; Laakso, Marja-Leena; Tolvanen, Asko; Ahonen, Timo; Aro, Tuija
2014-06-01
In this article, the authors examine the developmental continuity from prelinguistic communication to kindergarten age in language and working memory capacity. Following work outlining 6 groups of children with different trajectories of early communication development (ECD; Määttä, Laakso, Tolvanen, Ahonen, & Aro, 2012), the authors examined their later development by psychometric assessment. Ninety-one children first assessed at ages 12-21 months completed a battery of language and working memory tests at age 5;3 (years;months). Two of the ECD groups previously identified as being at risk for language difficulties continued to show weaker performance at follow-up. Seventy-nine percent of the children with compromised language skills at follow-up were identified on the basis of the ECD groups, but the number of false positives was high. The 2 at-risk groups also differed significantly from the typically developing groups in the measures tapping working memory capacity. In line with the dimensional view of language impairment, the accumulation of early delays predicted the amount of later difficulties; however, at the individual level, the prediction had rather low specificity. The results imply a strong link between language and working memory and call for further studies examining the early developmental interaction between language and memory.
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Expertise for upright faces improves the precision but not the capacity of visual working memory.
Lorenc, Elizabeth S; Pratte, Michael S; Angeloni, Christopher F; Tong, Frank
2014-10-01
Considerable research has focused on how basic visual features are maintained in working memory, but little is currently known about the precision or capacity of visual working memory for complex objects. How precisely can an object be remembered, and to what extent might familiarity or perceptual expertise contribute to working memory performance? To address these questions, we developed a set of computer-generated face stimuli that varied continuously along the dimensions of age and gender, and we probed participants' memories using a method-of-adjustment reporting procedure. This paradigm allowed us to separately estimate the precision and capacity of working memory for individual faces, on the basis of the assumptions of a discrete capacity model, and to assess the impact of face inversion on memory performance. We found that observers could maintain up to four to five items on average, with equally good memory capacity for upright and upside-down faces. In contrast, memory precision was significantly impaired by face inversion at every set size tested. Our results demonstrate that the precision of visual working memory for a complex stimulus is not strictly fixed but, instead, can be modified by learning and experience. We find that perceptual expertise for upright faces leads to significant improvements in visual precision, without modifying the capacity of working memory.
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Sandberg, Petra; Rönnlund, Michael; Derwinger-Hallberg, Anna; Stigsdotter Neely, Anna
2016-10-01
The study investigated the relationship between cognitive factors and gains in number recall following training in a number-consonant mnemonic in a sample of 112 older adults (M = 70.9 years). The cognitive factors examined included baseline episodic memory, working memory, processing speed, and verbal knowledge. In addition, predictors of maintenance of gains to a follow-up assessment, eight months later, were examined. Whereas working memory was a prominent predictor of baseline recall, the magnitude of gains in recall from pre- to post-test assessments were predicted by baseline episodic memory, processing speed, and verbal knowledge. Verbal knowledge was the only significant predictor of maintenance. Collectively, the results indicate the need to consider multiple factors to account for individual differences in memory plasticity. The potential contribution of additional factors to individual differences in memory plasticity is discussed.
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Assessing neurocognitive function in psychiatric disorders: A roadmap for enhancing consensus
Ahmari, Susanne E.; Eich, Teal; Cebenoyan, Deniz; Smith, Edward E.; Simpson, H. Blair
2014-01-01
It has been challenging to identify core neurocognitive deficits that are consistent across multiple studies in patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In turn, this leads to difficulty in translating findings from human studies into animal models to dissect pathophysiology. In this article, we use primary data from a working memory task in OCD patients to illustrate this issue. Working memory deficiencies have been proposed as an explanatory model for the evolution of checking compulsions in a subset of OCD patients. However, findings have been mixed due to variability in task design, examination of spatial vs. verbal working memory, and heterogeneity in patient populations. Two major questions therefore remain: first, do OCD patients have disturbances in working memory? Second, if there are working memory deficits in OCD, do they cause checking compulsions?. In order to investigate these questions, we tested 19 unmedicated OCD patients and 23 matched healthy controls using a verbal working memory task that has increased difficulty/task-load compared to classic digit-span tasks. OCD patients did not significantly differ in their performance on this task compared to healthy controls, regardless of the outcome measure used (i.e. reaction time or accuracy). Exploratory analyses suggest that a subset of patients with predominant doubt/checking symptoms may have decreased memory confidence despite normal performance on trials with the highest working memory load. These results suggest that other etiologic factors for checking compulsions should be considered. In addition, they serve as a touchstone for discussion, and therefore help us to generate a roadmap for increasing consensus in the assessment of neurocognitive function in psychiatric disorders. PMID:24994503
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McKendrick, Ryan; Shaw, Tyler; de Visser, Ewart; Saqer, Haneen; Kidwell, Brian; Parasuraman, Raja
2014-05-01
Assess team performance within a net-worked supervisory control setting while manipulating automated decision aids and monitoring team communication and working memory ability. Networked systems such as multi-unmanned air vehicle (UAV) supervision have complex properties that make prediction of human-system performance difficult. Automated decision aid can provide valuable information to operators, individual abilities can limit or facilitate team performance, and team communication patterns can alter how effectively individuals work together. We hypothesized that reliable automation, higher working memory capacity, and increased communication rates of task-relevant information would offset performance decrements attributed to high task load. Two-person teams performed a simulated air defense task with two levels of task load and three levels of automated aid reliability. Teams communicated and received decision aid messages via chat window text messages. Task Load x Automation effects were significant across all performance measures. Reliable automation limited the decline in team performance with increasing task load. Average team spatial working memory was a stronger predictor than other measures of team working memory. Frequency of team rapport and enemy location communications positively related to team performance, and word count was negatively related to team performance. Reliable decision aiding mitigated team performance decline during increased task load during multi-UAV supervisory control. Team spatial working memory, communication of spatial information, and team rapport predicted team success. An automated decision aid can improve team performance under high task load. Assessment of spatial working memory and the communication of task-relevant information can help in operator and team selection in supervisory control systems.
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Kofler, Michael J; Alderson, R Matt; Raiker, Joseph S; Bolden, Jennifer; Sarver, Dustin E; Rapport, Mark D
2014-05-01
The current study examined competing predictions of the default mode, cognitive neuroenergetic, and functional working memory models of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) regarding the relation between neurocognitive impairments in working memory and intraindividual variability. Twenty-two children with ADHD and 15 typically developing children were assessed on multiple tasks measuring intraindividual reaction time (RT) variability (ex-Gaussian: tau, sigma) and central executive (CE) working memory. Latent factor scores based on multiple, counterbalanced tasks were created for each construct of interest (CE, tau, sigma) to reflect reliable variance associated with each construct and remove task-specific, test-retest, and random error. Bias-corrected, bootstrapped mediation analyses revealed that CE working memory accounted for 88% to 100% of ADHD-related RT variability across models, and between-group differences in RT variability were no longer detectable after accounting for the mediating role of CE working memory. In contrast, RT variability accounted for 10% to 29% of between-group differences in CE working memory, and large magnitude CE working memory deficits remained after accounting for this partial mediation. Statistical comparison of effect size estimates across models suggests directionality of effects, such that the mediation effects of CE working memory on RT variability were significantly greater than the mediation effects of RT variability on CE working memory. The current findings question the role of RT variability as a primary neurocognitive indicator in ADHD and suggest that ADHD-related RT variability may be secondary to underlying deficits in CE working memory.
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Working memory regulates trait anxiety-related threat processing biases.
Booth, Robert W; Mackintosh, Bundy; Sharma, Dinkar
2017-06-01
High trait anxious individuals tend to show biased processing of threat. Correlational evidence suggests that executive control could be used to regulate such threat-processing. On this basis, we hypothesized that trait anxiety-related cognitive biases regarding threat should be exaggerated when executive control is experimentally impaired by loading working memory. In Study 1, 68 undergraduates read ambiguous vignettes under high and low working memory load; later, their interpretations of these vignettes were assessed via a recognition test. Trait anxiety predicted biased interpretation of social threat vignettes under high working memory load, but not under low working memory load. In Study 2, 53 undergraduates completed a dot probe task with fear-conditioned Japanese characters serving as threat stimuli. Trait anxiety predicted attentional bias to the threat stimuli but, again, this only occurred under high working memory load. Interestingly however, actual eye movements toward the threat stimuli were only associated with state anxiety, and this was not moderated by working memory load, suggesting that executive control regulates biased threat-processing downstream of initial input processes such as orienting. These results suggest that cognitive loads can exacerbate trait anxiety-related cognitive biases, and therefore represent a useful tool for assessing cognitive biases in future research. More importantly, since biased threat-processing has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, poor executive control may be a risk factor for anxiety disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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To Switch or Not to Switch: Role of Cognitive Control in Working Memory Training in Older Adults.
Basak, Chandramallika; O'Connell, Margaret A
2016-01-01
It is currently not known what are the best working memory training strategies to offset the age-related declines in fluid cognitive abilities. In this randomized clinical double-blind trial, older adults were randomly assigned to one of two types of working memory training - one group was trained on a predictable memory updating task (PT) and another group was trained on a novel, unpredictable memory updating task (UT). Unpredictable memory updating, compared to predictable, requires greater demands on cognitive control (Basak and Verhaeghen, 2011a). Therefore, the current study allowed us to evaluate the role of cognitive control in working memory training. All participants were assessed on a set of near and far transfer tasks at three different testing sessions - before training, immediately after the training, and 1.5 months after completing the training. Additionally, individual learning rates for a comparison working memory task (performed by both groups) and the trained task were computed. Training on unpredictable memory updating, compared to predictable, significantly enhanced performance on a measure of episodic memory, immediately after the training. Moreover, individuals with faster learning rates showed greater gains in this episodic memory task and another new working memory task; this effect was specific to UT. We propose that the unpredictable memory updating training, compared to predictable memory updating training, may a better strategy to improve selective cognitive abilities in older adults, and future studies could further investigate the role of cognitive control in working memory training.
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Identifying Early Links between Temperament, Short-Term and Working Memory in Preschoolers
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Visu-Petra, Laura; Cheie, Lavinia; Câmpan, Maria; Scutelnicu, Ioana; Benga, Oana
2018-01-01
The present study aimed to investigate early interrelationships between temperament, short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM), while also relating them to incipient anxious traits in a sample of 4-7-year-olds. Preschoolers were evaluated using verbal and visuospatial STM and WM tasks, while parental reports were used to assess children's…
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Automatic Guidance of Visual Attention from Verbal Working Memory
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Soto, David; Humphreys, Glyn W.
2007-01-01
Previous studies have shown that visual attention can be captured by stimuli matching the contents of working memory (WM). Here, the authors assessed the nature of the representation that mediates the guidance of visual attention from WM. Observers were presented with either verbal or visual primes (to hold in memory, Experiment 1; to verbalize,…
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Association between exposure to work stressors and cognitive performance.
Vuori, Marko; Akila, Ritva; Kalakoski, Virpi; Pentti, Jaana; Kivimäki, Mika; Vahtera, Jussi; Härmä, Mikko; Puttonen, Sampsa
2014-04-01
To examine the association between work stress and cognitive performance. Cognitive performance of a total of 99 women (mean age = 47.3 years) working in hospital wards at either the top or bottom quartiles of job strain was assessed using validated tests that measured learning, short-term memory, and speed of memory retrieval. The high job strain group (n = 43) had lower performance than the low job strain group (n = 56) in learning (P = 0.025), short-term memory (P = 0.027), and speed of memory retrieval (P = 0.003). After controlling for education level, only the difference in speed of memory retrieval remained statistically significant (P = 0.010). The association found between job strain and speed of memory retrieval might be one important factor explaining the effect of stress on work performance.
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Verbal working memory and reading abilities among students with visual impairment.
Argyropoulos, Vassilios; Masoura, Elvira; Tsiakali, Thomai K; Nikolaraizi, Magda; Lappa, Christina
2017-05-01
This study investigated the relationship between working memory (WM) and reading abilities among students with visual impairment (VI). Seventy-five students with VI (visually impairment and blindness), aged 10-15 years old participated in the study, of whom 44 were visually impaired and 31 were blind. The participants' reading ability was assessed with the standardized reading ability battery Test-A (Padeliadu & Antoniou, 2008) and their verbal working memory ability was assessed with the listening recall task from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (Pickering et al., 2001). Data analysis indicated a strong correlation between verbal WM and decoding, reading comprehension and overall reading ability among the participants with VI, while no correlation was found between reading fluency and verbal WM. The present study points out the important role of verbal WM in reading among students who are VI and carries implications for the education of those individuals. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Moossavi, Abdollah; Mehrkian, Saiedeh; Lotfi, Yones; Faghihzadeh, Soghrat; sajedi, Hamed
2014-11-01
Auditory processing disorder (APD) describes a complex and heterogeneous disorder characterized by poor speech perception, especially in noisy environments. APD may be responsible for a range of sensory processing deficits associated with learning difficulties. There is no general consensus about the nature of APD and how the disorder should be assessed or managed. This study assessed the effect of cognition abilities (working memory capacity) on sound lateralization in children with auditory processing disorders, in order to determine how "auditory cognition" interacts with APD. The participants in this cross-sectional comparative study were 20 typically developing and 17 children with a diagnosed auditory processing disorder (9-11 years old). Sound lateralization abilities investigated using inter-aural time (ITD) differences and inter-aural intensity (IID) differences with two stimuli (high pass and low pass noise) in nine perceived positions. Working memory capacity was evaluated using the non-word repetition, and forward and backward digits span tasks. Linear regression was employed to measure the degree of association between working memory capacity and localization tests between the two groups. Children in the APD group had consistently lower scores than typically developing subjects in lateralization and working memory capacity measures. The results showed working memory capacity had significantly negative correlation with ITD errors especially with high pass noise stimulus but not with IID errors in APD children. The study highlights the impact of working memory capacity on auditory lateralization. The finding of this research indicates that the extent to which working memory influences auditory processing depend on the type of auditory processing and the nature of stimulus/listening situation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Memory functions in chronic pain: examining contributions of attention and age to test performance.
Oosterman, Joukje M; Derksen, Laura C; van Wijck, Albert J M; Veldhuijzen, Dieuwke S; Kessels, Roy P C
2011-01-01
Previous studies have revealed that memory performance is diminished in chronic pain patients. Few studies, however, have assessed multiple components of memory in a single sample. It is currently also unknown whether attentional problems, which are commonly observed in chronic pain, mediate the decline in memory. Finally, previous studies have focused on middle-aged adults, and a possible detrimental effect of aging on memory performance in chronic pain patients has been commonly disregarded. This study, therefore, aimed at describing the pattern of semantic, working, and visual and verbal episodic memory performance in participants with chronic pain, while testing for possible contributions of attention and age to task performance. Thirty-four participants with chronic pain and 32 pain-free participants completed tests of episodic, semantic, and working memory to assess memory performance and a test of attention. Participants with chronic pain performed worse on tests of working memory and verbal episodic memory. A decline in attention explained some, but not all, group differences in memory performance. Finally, no additional effect of age on the diminished task performance in participants with chronic pain was observed. Taken together, the results indicate that chronic pain significantly affects memory performance. Part of this effect may be caused by underlying attentional dysfunction, although this could not fully explain the observed memory decline. An increase in age in combination with the presence of chronic pain did not additionally affect memory performance.
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Confident failures: Lapses of working memory reveal a metacognitive blind spot.
Adam, Kirsten C S; Vogel, Edward K
2017-07-01
Working memory performance fluctuates dramatically from trial to trial. On many trials, performance is no better than chance. Here, we assessed participants' awareness of working memory failures. We used a whole-report visual working memory task to quantify both trial-by-trial performance and trial-by-trial subjective ratings of inattention to the task. In Experiment 1 (N = 41), participants were probed for task-unrelated thoughts immediately following 20% of trials. In Experiment 2 (N = 30), participants gave a rating of their attentional state following 25% of trials. Finally, in Experiments 3a (N = 44) and 3b (N = 34), participants reported confidence of every response using a simple mouse-click judgment. Attention-state ratings and off-task thoughts predicted the number of items correctly identified on each trial, replicating previous findings that subjective measures of attention state predict working memory performance. However, participants correctly identified failures on only around 28% of failure trials. Across experiments, participants' metacognitive judgments reliably predicted variation in working memory performance but consistently and severely underestimated the extent of failures. Further, individual differences in metacognitive accuracy correlated with overall working memory performance, suggesting that metacognitive monitoring may be key to working memory success.
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Control of interference during working memory updating.
Szmalec, Arnaud; Verbruggen, Frederick; Vandierendonck, André; Kemps, Eva
2011-02-01
The current study examined the nature of the processes underlying working memory updating. In 4 experiments using the n-back paradigm, the authors demonstrate that continuous updating of items in working memory prevents strong binding of those items to their contexts in working memory, and hence leads to an increased susceptibility to proactive interference. Results of Experiments 1 and 2 show that this interference reflects a competition between a process that reveals the degree of familiarity of an item and a context-sensitive recollection process that depends on the strength of bindings in working memory. Experiment 3 further clarifies the origins of interference during updating by demonstrating that even items that are semantically related to the updated working memory contents but that have not been maintained in working memory before cause proactive interference. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 indicate that the occurrence of interference leads to top-down behavioral adjustments that prioritize recollection over familiarity assessment. The implications of these findings for the construct validity of the n-back task, for the control processes involved in working memory updating, and for the concept of executive control more generally are discussed. (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.
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Suor, Jennifer H; Sturge-Apple, Melissa L; Skibo, Michael A
2017-10-01
Previous research has documented socioeconomic-related disparities in children's working memory; however, the putative proximal caregiving mechanisms that underlie these effects are less known. The present study sought to examine whether the effects of early family socioeconomic status on children's working memory were mediated through experiences of caregiving, specifically maternal harsh discipline and responsiveness. Utilizing a psychobiological framework of parenting, the present study also tested whether maternal working memory moderated the initial paths between the family socioeconomic context and maternal harsh discipline and responsiveness in the mediation model. The sample included 185 socioeconomically diverse mother-child dyads assessed when children were 3.5 and 5 years old. Results demonstrated that maternal harsh discipline was a unique mediator of the relation between early experiences of family socioeconomic adversity and lower working memory outcomes in children. Individual differences in maternal working memory emerged as a potent individual difference factor that specifically moderated the mediating influence of harsh discipline within low socioeconomic contexts. The findings have implications for early risk processes underlying deficits in child working memory outcomes and potential targets for parent-child interventions.
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Gladwin, Thomas E; Peeters, Margot; Prins, Pier J M; Wiers, Reinout W
2018-01-01
Background Working memory capacity has been found to be impaired in adolescents with various psychological problems, such as addictive behaviors. Training of working memory capacity can lead to significant behavioral improvements, but it is usually long and tedious, taxing participants’ motivation to train. Objective This study aimed to evaluate whether adding game elements to the training could help improve adolescents’ motivation to train while improving cognition. Methods A total of 84 high school students were allocated to a working memory capacity training, a gamified working memory capacity training, or a placebo condition. Working memory capacity, motivation to train, and drinking habits were assessed before and after training. Results Self-reported evaluations did not show a self-reported preference for the game, but participants in the gamified working memory capacity training condition did train significantly longer. The game successfully increased motivation to train, but this effect faded over time. Working memory capacity increased equally in all conditions but did not lead to significantly lower drinking, which may be due to low drinking levels at baseline. Conclusions We recommend that future studies attempt to prolong this motivational effect, as it appeared to fade over time. PMID:29792294
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Early working memory and maternal communication in toddlers born very low birth weight
Lowe, Jean; Erickson, Sarah J; MacLean, Peggy; Duvall, Susanne W
2010-01-01
Aim Early working memory is emerging as an important indicator of developmental outcome predicting later cognitive, behavioural and academic competencies. The current study compared early working memory in a sample of toddlers (18–22 months) born very low birth weight (VLBW; n = 40) and full term (n = 51) and the relationship between early working memory, mental developmental index (MDI), and maternal communication in both samples. Methods Early working memory, measured by object permanence; Bayley mental developmental index; and maternal communication, coded during mother-toddler play interaction, were examined in 39 toddlers born VLBW and 41 toddlers born full term. Results Toddlers born VLBW were found to be 6.4 times less likely to demonstrate attainment of object permanence than were toddlers born full term, adjusting for age at testing. MDI and maternal communication were found to be positively associated with attainment of object permanence in the VLBW group only. Conclusion The difference found in the early working memory performance of toddlers born VLBW, compared with those born full term, emphasizes the importance of assessing early working memory in at-risk populations, while the maternal communication finding highlights potential targets of intervention for improving working memory in toddlers born VLBW. PMID:19154525
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Early working memory and maternal communication in toddlers born very low birth weight.
Lowe, Jean; Erickson, Sarah J; Maclean, Peggy; Duvall, Susanne W
2009-04-01
Early working memory is emerging as an important indicator of developmental outcome predicting later cognitive, behavioural and academic competencies. The current study compared early working memory in a sample of toddlers (18-22 months) born very low birth weight (VLBW; n = 40) and full term (n = 51) and the relationship between early working memory, mental developmental index (MDI), and maternal communication in both samples. Early working memory, measured by object permanence; Bayley mental developmental index; and maternal communication, coded during mother-toddler play interaction, were examined in 39 toddlers born VLBW and 41 toddlers born full term. Toddlers born VLBW were found to be 6.4 times less likely to demonstrate attainment of object permanence than were toddlers born full term, adjusting for age at testing. MDI and maternal communication were found to be positively associated with attainment of object permanence in the VLBW group only. The difference found in the early working memory performance of toddlers born VLBW, compared with those born full term, emphasizes the importance of assessing early working memory in at-risk populations, while the maternal communication finding highlights potential targets of intervention for improving working memory in toddlers born VLBW.
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Soczynska, Joanna K; Ravindran, Lakshmi N; Styra, Rima; McIntyre, Roger S; Cyriac, Anna; Manierka, Marena S; Kennedy, Sidney H
2014-12-15
Decrements in cognitive function are a common feature of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and whether distinct classes of antidepressants differentially affect memory in these individuals has not been sufficiently evaluated. In this study we sought to determine the effect of escitalopram and bupropion XL on memory and psychosocial function. Forty-one individuals (18-50 years) with MDD were enrolled in an 8-week, double-blind, double-dummy, randomized controlled comparative trial of bupropion XL and escitalopram. Thirty-six participants completed pre and post memory assessments. Verbal, non-verbal and working memory were evaluated with a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. Psychosocial function was assessed with the Sheehan Disability Scale and Endicott Work Productivity Scale. Escitalopram and bupropion XL significantly improved immediate as well as delayed verbal and nonverbal memory, global function (all p≤0.001), and work productivity (p=0.045), with no significant between-group differences. Improvement in immediate verbal memory exerted a direct influence on improvement in global function (p=0.006). Treatment with either escitalopram or bupropion XL was associated with improvement in memory and psychosocial function in adults with MDD. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nyroos, Mikaela; Wiklund-Hornqvist, Carola
2012-01-01
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between working memory capacity and mathematical performance measured by the national curriculum assessment in third-grade children (n = 40). The national tests concerned six subareas within mathematics. One-way ANOVA, two-tailed Pearson correlation and multiple regression analyses were…
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Riediger, Michaela; Wrzus, Cornelia; Klipker, Kathrin; Müller, Viktor; Schmiedek, Florian; Wagner, Gert G
2014-03-01
We investigated age differences in associations among self-reported experiences of tense and energetic arousal, physiological activation indicated by heart rate, and working-memory performance in everyday life. The sample comprised 92 participants aged 14-83 years. Data were collected for 24 hr while participants pursued their normal daily routines. Participants wore an ambulatory biomonitoring system that recorded their cardiac and physical activity. Using mobile phones as assessment devices, they also provided an average of 7 assessments of their momentary experiences of tense arousal (feeling nervous) and energetic arousal (feeling wide-awake) and completed 2 trials of a well-practiced working-memory task. Experiences of higher energetic arousal were associated with higher heart rate in participants younger than 50 years of age but not in participants older than that, and energetic arousal was unrelated to within-person fluctuations in working-memory performance. Experiences of tense arousal were associated with higher heart rate independent of participants' age. Tense arousal and physiological activation were accompanied by momentary impairments in working-memory performance in middle-aged and older adults but not in younger individuals. Results suggest that psychological arousal experiences are associated with lower working-memory performance in middle-aged and older adults when they are accompanied by increased physiological activation and that the same is true for physiological activation deriving from other influences. Hence, age differences in cognitive performance may be exaggerated when the assessment situation itself elicits tense arousal or occurs in situations with higher physiological arousal arising from affective experiences, physical activity, or circadian rhythms. (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.
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Working memory and executive functions in transient global amnesia.
Quinette, Peggy; Guillery, Bérengère; Desgranges, Béatrice; de la Sayette, Vincent; Viader, Fausto; Eustache, Francis
2003-09-01
Transient global amnesia (TGA) is usually considered to produce a profound impairment of long-term episodic memory, while at the same time sparing working memory. However, this neuropsychological dissociation has rarely been examined in detail. While a few studies have assessed some components of working memory in TGA, the results that have been obtained are far from conclusive. To clarify this issue, we carried out a comprehensive investigation of working memory in 10 patients during a TGA attack. In the first study, we report the results from three patients examined with a battery of neuropsychological tests designed to assess each of the three subcomponents of Baddeley's model of working memory. In a second study, seven different patients underwent neuropsychological investigations that focused specifically on the central executive system, using a protocol derived from a study by Miyake and colleagues. Our findings showed that subcomponents of working memory, such as the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketch pad, were spared in TGA patients. Specific executive functions that entailed inhibitory control, dual task performance, updating and shifting mechanisms were also found to be normal. However, we found significantly impaired performance for the Brown-Peterson test, and that TGA patients were significantly impaired in the recollection of their episodic memories. They also made reduced numbers of 'remember' compared with 'know' judgments in the episodic memory test several days after TGA. On the basis of our findings, it would appear that the episodic memory deficit during TGA is not related to elementary aspects of executive functioning. Our data also highlight the nature of the cognitive mechanisms involved in the Brown-Peterson task, which may well depend on long-term memory (such as the process of semantic encoding). Lastly, the selective deficit in recollective episodic memories observed in TGA may be principally related to medial temporal lobe abnormalities that have been reported in this syndrome.
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Fried, Ronna; Abrams, Jessica; Hall, Anna; Feinberg, Leah; Pope, Amanda; Biederman, Joseph
2017-09-01
Working Memory (WM) is a domain of executive functioning often impaired in individuals with ADHD. Although assumed to cause difficulties across functioning, the scope of impairments from WM deficits in ADHD has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to examine outcomes associated with WM deficits in ADHD. We conducted a search of the scientific literature on WM deficits, and Freedom From Distractibility (FFD), in ADHD using PubMed and PsycInfo databases. The final sample included 11 controlled studies of WM/FFD deficits in ADHD with operationalized assessment of outcomes in academic, social, and emotional areas. WM assessment was divided into auditory-verbal memory (AVM) and spatial-visual memory (SWM). Seven studies examined WM deficits in academic functioning, eight studies assessed WM deficits in social functioning, and three assessed WM deficits in psychopathology. The majority of the literature suggests that WM deficits affect primarily academic functioning.
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Memory Skills of Boys with Fragile X Syndrome
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ornstein, Peter A.; Schaaf, Jennifer M.; Hooper, Stephen R.; Hatton, Deborah D.; Mirrett, Penny; Bailey, Donald B., Jr.
2008-01-01
Multiple aspects of memory were examined in 42 boys with fragile X syndrome and a comparison group of 42 typically developing boys matched on MA. Working memory, incidental memory, and deliberate memory were assessed with a battery that included both free-recall and recognition tasks. Findings indicated that boys with fragile X syndrome performed…
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Looking inward and back: Real-time monitoring of visual working memories.
Suchow, Jordan W; Fougnie, Daryl; Alvarez, George A
2017-04-01
Confidence in our memories is influenced by many factors, including beliefs about the perceptibility or memorability of certain kinds of objects and events, as well as knowledge about our skill sets, habits, and experiences. Notoriously, our knowledge and beliefs about memory can lead us astray, causing us to be overly confident in eyewitness testimony or to overestimate the frequency of recent experiences. Here, using visual working memory as a case study, we stripped away all these potentially misleading cues, requiring observers to make confidence judgments by directly assessing the quality of their memory representations. We show that individuals can monitor the status of information in working memory as it degrades over time. Our findings suggest that people have access to information reflecting the existence and quality of their working memories, and furthermore, that they can use this information to guide their behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Weight and See: Loading Working Memory Improves Incidental Identification of Irrelevant Faces
Carmel, David; Fairnie, Jake; Lavie, Nilli
2012-01-01
Are task-irrelevant stimuli processed to a level enabling individual identification? This question is central both for perceptual processing models and for applied settings (e.g., eye-witness testimony). Lavie’s load theory proposes that working memory actively maintains attentional prioritization of relevant over irrelevant information. Loading working memory thus impairs attentional prioritization, leading to increased processing of task-irrelevant stimuli. Previous research has shown that increased working memory load leads to greater interference effects from response-competing distractors. Here we test the novel prediction that increased processing of irrelevant stimuli under high working memory load should lead to a greater likelihood of incidental identification of entirely irrelevant stimuli. To test this, we asked participants to perform a word-categorization task while ignoring task-irrelevant images. The categorization task was performed during the retention interval of a working memory task with either low or high load (defined by memory set size). Following the final experimental trial, a surprise question assessed incidental identification of the irrelevant image. Loading working memory was found to improve identification of task-irrelevant faces, but not of building stimuli (shown in a separate experiment to be less distracting). These findings suggest that working memory plays a critical role in determining whether distracting stimuli will be subsequently identified. PMID:22912623
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Hidalgo, Vanesa; Almela, Mercedes; Pulopulos, Matias M; Salvador, Alicia
2016-09-01
There are large individual differences in age-related cognitive decline. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) functioning has been suggested as one of the mechanisms underlying these differences. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between the diurnal cortisol cycle, measured as the cortisol awakening response (CAR), and the diurnal cortisol slope (DCS) and the memory performance of healthy older people. To do so, we assessed the verbal, visual, and working memory performance of 64 participants (32 men) from 57 to 76 years old who also provided 14 saliva samples on two consecutive weekdays to determine their diurnal cortisol cycle. The CAR was linearly and negatively associated with verbal (significantly) and visual (marginally) memory domains, but not with working memory. Sex did not moderate these relationships. Furthermore, no associations were found between the DCS and any of the three memory domains assessed. Our results indicate that the two components of the diurnal cortisol cycle have different relationships with memory performance, with the CAR being more relevant than DCS in understanding the link from HPA-axis activity and regulation to different types of memory. These results suggest that the CAR is related to memory domains dependent on hippocampal functioning (i.e., declarative memory), but not to those that are more dependent on prefrontal cortex functioning (i.e., working memory). Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Vergauwe, Evie; Barrouillet, Pierre; Camos, Valérie
2009-07-01
Examinations of interference between visual and spatial materials in working memory have suggested domain- and process-based fractionations of visuo-spatial working memory. The present study examined the role of central time-based resource sharing in visuo-spatial working memory and assessed its role in obtained interference patterns. Visual and spatial storage were combined with both visual and spatial on-line processing components in computer-paced working memory span tasks (Experiment 1) and in a selective interference paradigm (Experiment 2). The cognitive load of the processing components was manipulated to investigate its impact on concurrent maintenance for both within-domain and between-domain combinations of processing and storage components. In contrast to both domain- and process-based fractionations of visuo-spatial working memory, the results revealed that recall performance was determined by the cognitive load induced by the processing of items, rather than by the domain to which those items pertained. These findings are interpreted as evidence for a time-based resource-sharing mechanism in visuo-spatial working memory.
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Festini, Sara B; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A
2017-01-01
Directed forgetting tasks instruct people to forget targeted memoranda. In the context of working memory, people attempt to forget representations that are currently held in mind. Here, we evaluated candidate mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory, by (a) testing the influence of articulatory suppression, a rehearsal-reducing and attention-demanding secondary task, on directed forgetting efficacy, and by (b) assessing the ability of people to perform forgetting in the absence of to-be-remembered competitors to rehearse. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression interfered with directed forgetting, increasing the proportion of false alarms to to-be-forgotten probes in the working memory phase and decreasing the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect as assessed by an incidental long-term memory recognition test. Experiment 2 replicated the effects of articulatory suppression and tested whether the simultaneous requirement to retain, and presumably rehearse, to-be-remembered items was necessary for successful forgetting. The long-term directed forgetting effect was equivalent whether or not participants had to-be-remembered items to rehearse during the working memory phase. Experiment 3 included an additional comparison condition and confirmed that articulatory suppression interfered with directed forgetting and that participants were as efficient at directed forgetting with and without competitors to remember. In combination, these experiments suggest that directed forgetting in working memory requires an active control process that is limited by articulatory suppression, and that the demand to remember a concurrent memory set is unnecessary for this control process to operate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rhodes, Sinead M.; Riby, Deborah M.; Fraser, Emma; Campbell, Lorna Elise
2011-01-01
The present study investigated verbal and spatial working memory (WM) functioning in individuals with the neuro-developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) using WM component tasks. While there is strong evidence of WM impairments in WS, previous research has focused on short-term memory and has neglected assessment of executive components of…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Squires, Katie Ellen
2013-01-01
This study investigated the differential contribution of auditory-verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) on decoding skills in second- and fifth-grade children identified with poor decoding. Thirty-two second-grade students and 22 fifth-grade students completed measures that assessed simple and complex auditory-verbal and visuospatial memory,…
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What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?
Cowan, Nelson
2008-01-01
In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rather encouraging regarding the existence of both decay and capacity limits. Working memory has been conceived and defined in three different, slightly discrepant ways: as short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks, as a multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in short-term memory, and as the use of attention to manage short-term memory. Regardless of the definition, there are some measures of memory in the short term that seem routine and do not correlate well with cognitive aptitudes and other measures (those usually identified with the term "working memory") that seem more attention demanding and do correlate well with these aptitudes. The evidence is evaluated and placed within a theoretical framework depicted in Fig. 1.
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The cortisol awakening response and memory performance in older men and women.
Almela, Mercedes; van der Meij, Leander; Hidalgo, Vanesa; Villada, Carolina; Salvador, Alicia
2012-12-01
The activity and regulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis has been related to cognitive decline during aging. This study investigated whether the cortisol awakening response (CAR) is related to memory performance among older adults. The sample was composed of 88 participants (44 men and 44 women) from 55 to 77 years old. The memory assessment consisted of two tests measuring declarative memory (a paragraph recall test and a word list learning test) and two tests measuring working memory (a spatial span test and a spatial working memory test). Among those participants who showed the CAR on two consecutive days, we found that a greater CAR was related to poorer declarative memory performance in both men and women, and to better working memory performance only in men. The results of our study suggest that the relationship between CAR and memory performance is negative in men and women when memory performance is largely dependent on hippocampal functioning (i.e. declarative memory), and positive, but only in men, when memory performance is largely dependent on prefrontal cortex functioning (i.e. working memory). Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Alavash, Mohsen; Doebler, Philipp; Holling, Heinz; Thiel, Christiane M; Gießing, Carsten
2015-03-01
Is there one optimal topology of functional brain networks at rest from which our cognitive performance would profit? Previous studies suggest that functional integration of resting state brain networks is an important biomarker for cognitive performance. However, it is still unknown whether higher network integration is an unspecific predictor for good cognitive performance or, alternatively, whether specific network organization during rest predicts only specific cognitive abilities. Here, we investigated the relationship between network integration at rest and cognitive performance using two tasks that measured different aspects of working memory; one task assessed visual-spatial and the other numerical working memory. Network clustering, modularity and efficiency were computed to capture network integration on different levels of network organization, and to statistically compare their correlations with the performance in each working memory test. The results revealed that each working memory aspect profits from a different resting state topology, and the tests showed significantly different correlations with each of the measures of network integration. While higher global network integration and modularity predicted significantly better performance in visual-spatial working memory, both measures showed no significant correlation with numerical working memory performance. In contrast, numerical working memory was superior in subjects with highly clustered brain networks, predominantly in the intraparietal sulcus, a core brain region of the working memory network. Our findings suggest that a specific balance between local and global functional integration of resting state brain networks facilitates special aspects of cognitive performance. In the context of working memory, while visual-spatial performance is facilitated by globally integrated functional resting state brain networks, numerical working memory profits from increased capacities for local processing, especially in brain regions involved in working memory performance. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Ganzer, Christine A; Insel, Kathleen C; Ritter, Leslie S
2012-10-01
Stroke remains a major cause of mortality and disability among older adults. Although early treatment after stroke is known to reduce both mortality and disability, the first step in seeking early treatment is dependent on the rapid recognition of the signs of stroke. Recall of the signs of stroke may be dependent on factors that exist before the stroke itself. Although it is known that both working memory and health literacy decline with advancing age, these factors have not been thoroughly examined with respect to recall of the signs of stroke. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to investigate associations between working memory, health literacy, and recall of the signs of stroke among older adults. Community dwelling older adults (≥65 years of age) were recruited from two senior centers. Fifty-six participants meeting inclusion criteria provided demographic and health information and were asked to read a public service brochure listing the five warning signs of stroke. Working memory was then assessed using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale 3rd Edition Working Memory Index. Health literacy was assessed by the Short Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults. Participants' recall of the five warning signs of stroke was evaluated. The mean age was 80.4 years. The mean number of the signs of stroke recalled was 2.9 ± 1.33. Working memory and health literacy were positively correlated with recall of the signs of stroke (r = .38, p < 0.01; r = .44, p < 0.01). In a simultaneous regression, only health literacy remained a significant predictor of recall. There was no statistically significant interaction between working memory and health literacy. Findings from this study indicate that working memory and health literacy were associated with successful recall of the warning signs of stroke in older adults. Further studies are needed to determine if programs that include cognitive and literacy assessments could identify older adults who need additional support to learn and recall the signs of stroke.
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Real-Time State Estimation in a Flight Simulator Using fNIRS
Gateau, Thibault; Durantin, Gautier; Lancelot, Francois; Scannella, Sebastien; Dehais, Frederic
2015-01-01
Working memory is a key executive function for flying an aircraft. This function is particularly critical when pilots have to recall series of air traffic control instructions. However, working memory limitations may jeopardize flight safety. Since the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) method seems promising for assessing working memory load, our objective is to implement an on-line fNIRS-based inference system that integrates two complementary estimators. The first estimator is a real-time state estimation MACD-based algorithm dedicated to identifying the pilot’s instantaneous mental state (not-on-task vs. on-task). It does not require a calibration process to perform its estimation. The second estimator is an on-line SVM-based classifier that is able to discriminate task difficulty (low working memory load vs. high working memory load). These two estimators were tested with 19 pilots who were placed in a realistic flight simulator and were asked to recall air traffic control instructions. We found that the estimated pilot’s mental state matched significantly better than chance with the pilot’s real state (62% global accuracy, 58% specificity, and 72% sensitivity). The second estimator, dedicated to assessing single trial working memory loads, led to 80% classification accuracy, 72% specificity, and 89% sensitivity. These two estimators establish reusable blocks for further fNIRS-based passive brain computer interface development. PMID:25816347
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Smith, Andrew M.; Spiegler, Kevin M.; Sauce, Bruno; Wass, Christopher D.; Sturzoiu, Tudor; Matzel, Louis D.
2013-01-01
Increases in performance on tests of attention and learning are often observed shortly after a period of aerobic exercise, and evidence suggests that humans who engage in regular exercise are partially protected from age-related cognitive decline. However, the cognitive benefits of exercise are typically short-lived, limiting the practical application of these observations. We explored whether physical exercise would induce lasting changes in general cognitive ability if that exercise was combined with working memory training, which is purported to broadly impact on cognitive performance. Mice received either exercise (six weeks of voluntary running wheel access), working memory training, both treatments, or various control treatments. Near the completion of this period of exercise, working memory training (in a dual radial-arm maze) was initiated (alternating with days of exercise), and was continued for several weeks. Upon completion of these treatments, animals were assessed (2–4 weeks later) for performance on four diverse learning tasks, and the aggregate performance of individual animals across all four learning tasks was estimated. Working memory training alone promoted small increases in general cognitive performance, although any beneficial effects of exercise alone had dissipated by the time of learning assessments. However, the two treatments in combination more than doubled the improvement in general cognitive performance supported by working memory training alone. Unlike the transient effects that acute aerobic exercise can have on isolated learning tasks, these results indicate that an acute period of exercise combined with working memory training can have synergistic and lasting impact on general cognitive performance. PMID:24036169
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Cognition in school-aged children with "active" epilepsy: A population-based study.
Reilly, Colin; Atkinson, Patricia; Das, Krishna B; Chin, Richard F M; Aylett, Sarah E; Burch, Victoria; Gillberg, Christopher; Scott, Rod C; Neville, Brian G R
2015-01-01
There is a lack of population-based data on specific cognitive profiles in childhood epilepsy. This study sought to determine the frequency of impairments in global cognition and aspects of working memory and processing speed in a population-based sample of children with "active" epilepsy (on antiepileptic Drugs (AEDs), and/or had a seizure in the last year). Factors significantly associated with global and specific difficulties in cognition were also identified. A total of 85 (74% of eligible population) school-aged children (5-15 years) with "active" epilepsy underwent comprehensive psychological assessment including assessment of global cognition, working memory, and processing speed. Scores on cognitive subtests were compared via paired-samples t tests. The factors associated with cognitive difficulties were analyzed via linear regression. A total of 24% of children were functioning below IQ 50, and 40% had IQ scores below 70. Scores on the Processing Speed Index were significantly lower than scores on the Verbal or Performance indexes on Wechsler instruments. The Coding subtest was a significant weakness compared with the other Wechsler subtests. A total of 58% of children displayed "memory underachievement" (memory score 1 SD below assessed IQ) on at least one of the four administered working memory subtests. Factors significantly associated with globally impaired cognition included being on polytherapy (β = -13.0; 95% CI [-19.3, -6.6], p = .000) and having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; β = -11.1, 95% CI [-3.0, -19.3], p = .008). Being on polytherapy was also associated with lower scores on the working memory and processing speed composite scores. Having developmental coordination disorder (DCD) was associated with a lower score on the processing speed composite. There is a high rate of global and specific cognitive difficulties in childhood epilepsy. Difficulties are most pronounced in aspects of working memory and processing speed. Predictors of cognitive impairment in childhood epilepsy include epilepsy-related and behavioral factors, which may differ depending on the domain of cognition assessed.
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Brown, Louise A.
2016-01-01
Working memory is vulnerable to age-related decline, but there is debate regarding the age-sensitivity of different forms of spatial-sequential working memory task, depending on their passive or active nature. The functional architecture of spatial working memory was therefore explored in younger (18–40 years) and older (64–85 years) adults, using passive and active recall tasks. Spatial working memory was assessed using a modified version of the Spatial Span subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale – Third Edition (WMS-III; Wechsler, 1998). Across both age groups, the effects of interference (control, visual, or spatial), and recall type (forward and backward), were investigated. There was a clear effect of age group, with younger adults demonstrating a larger spatial working memory capacity than the older adults overall. There was also a specific effect of interference, with the spatial interference task (spatial tapping) reliably reducing performance relative to both the control and visual interference (dynamic visual noise) conditions in both age groups and both recall types. This suggests that younger and older adults have similar dependence upon active spatial rehearsal, and that both forward and backward recall require this processing capacity. Linear regression analyses were then carried out within each age group, to assess the predictors of performance in each recall format (forward and backward). Specifically the backward recall task was significantly predicted by age, within both the younger and older adult groups. This finding supports previous literature showing lifespan linear declines in spatial-sequential working memory, and in working memory tasks from other domains, but contrasts with previous evidence that backward spatial span is no more sensitive to aging than forward span. The study suggests that backward spatial span is indeed more processing-intensive than forward span, even when both tasks include a retention period, and that age predicts backward spatial span performance across the adult lifespan, within both younger and older adulthood. PMID:27757096
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Brown, Louise A
2016-01-01
Working memory is vulnerable to age-related decline, but there is debate regarding the age-sensitivity of different forms of spatial-sequential working memory task, depending on their passive or active nature. The functional architecture of spatial working memory was therefore explored in younger (18-40 years) and older (64-85 years) adults, using passive and active recall tasks. Spatial working memory was assessed using a modified version of the Spatial Span subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale - Third Edition (WMS-III; Wechsler, 1998). Across both age groups, the effects of interference (control, visual, or spatial), and recall type (forward and backward), were investigated. There was a clear effect of age group, with younger adults demonstrating a larger spatial working memory capacity than the older adults overall. There was also a specific effect of interference, with the spatial interference task (spatial tapping) reliably reducing performance relative to both the control and visual interference (dynamic visual noise) conditions in both age groups and both recall types. This suggests that younger and older adults have similar dependence upon active spatial rehearsal, and that both forward and backward recall require this processing capacity. Linear regression analyses were then carried out within each age group, to assess the predictors of performance in each recall format (forward and backward). Specifically the backward recall task was significantly predicted by age, within both the younger and older adult groups. This finding supports previous literature showing lifespan linear declines in spatial-sequential working memory, and in working memory tasks from other domains, but contrasts with previous evidence that backward spatial span is no more sensitive to aging than forward span. The study suggests that backward spatial span is indeed more processing-intensive than forward span, even when both tasks include a retention period, and that age predicts backward spatial span performance across the adult lifespan, within both younger and older adulthood.
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Guo, Wei; Wang, Biye; Lu, Yue; Zhu, Qin; Shi, Zhihao; Ren, Jie
2016-01-01
The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between different exercise modes and visuospatial working memory in healthy older adults. A cross-sectional design was adopted. A total of 111 healthy older adults were enrolled in the study. They were classified by the exercise-related questionnaire to be in an open-skill group, closed-skill group or sedentary group. In experiment 1, the participants performed a visuospatial working memory task. The results indicated that both closed-skill (p < 0.05) and open-skill (p < 0.01) groups reached a higher accuracy than the sedentary group. Experiment 2 examined whether the exercise-induced benefit of working memory was manifested in passive maintenance or active manipulation of working memory which was assessed by visuospatial short-term memory task and visuospatial mental rotation task, respectively. The results showed that the open-skill (p < 0.01) group was more accurate than the sedentary group in the visuospatial short-term memory task, whereas the group difference in the visuospatial mental rotation task was not significant. These findings combined to suggest that physical exercise was associated with better visuospatial working memory in older adults. Furthermore, open-skill exercises that demand higher cognitive processing showed selective benefit for passive maintenance of working memory.
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Phonological awareness and the working memory of children with and without literacy difficulties.
Cardoso, Andreia Martins de Souza; Silva, Mônica Marins da; Pereira, Mônica Medeiros de Britto
2013-01-01
To investigate phonological awareness and working memory skills as well as their influence on the literacy process in a group of intellectually normal children. Forty intellectually normal children (7.6-8.0 years) from the second and third grades of elementary school participated. Children were organized in two groups (20 children each): one with and another without literacy difficulties. These participants underwent RAVEN's intelligence quotient test, audiometric assessment, CONFIAS test of phonological awareness, written spelling task, and working memory test. Children in the alphabetic phase presented a good development of phonological awareness, and 85% of them showed a high-performance working memory. Children in the syllabic-alphabetic phase had changes in phonological awareness, and 91.6% of them showed an average working memory performance. The subjects at pre-syllabic and syllabic phases demonstrated more difficulties in phonological awareness than those at syllabic-alphabetic and had a poor working memory performance. Between-group differences were observed for CONFIAS and working memory tests (p<0.0001). There was also a significant correlation (r=0.78, p=0.01) between the skills of phonological awareness and working memory for the total sample of individuals. Based on these results, it was found that as phonological awareness and working memory levels increased, the literacy phase also advanced, therefore showing that these are directly proportional measures.
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Chen, Ai-Guo; Zhu, Li-Na; Yan, Jun; Yin, Heng-Chan
2016-01-01
Working memory lies at the core of cognitive function and plays a crucial role in children's learning, reasoning, problem solving, and intellectual activity. Behavioral findings have suggested that acute aerobic exercise improves children's working memory; however, there is still very little knowledge about whether a single session of aerobic exercise can alter working memory's brain activation patterns, as assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Therefore, we investigated the effect of acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise on working memory and its brain activation patterns in preadolescent children, and further explored the neural basis of acute aerobic exercise on working memory in these children. We used a within-subjects design with a counterbalanced order. Nine healthy, right-handed children were scanned with a Siemens MAGNETOM Trio 3.0 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging scanner while they performed a working memory task (N-back task), following a baseline session and a 30-min, moderate-intensity exercise session. Compared with the baseline session, acute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise benefitted performance in the N-back task, increasing brain activities of bilateral parietal cortices, left hippocampus, and the bilateral cerebellum. These data extend the current knowledge by indicating that acute aerobic exercise enhances children's working memory, and the neural basis may be related to changes in the working memory's brain activation patterns elicited by acute aerobic exercise.
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NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB): list sorting test to measure working memory.
Tulsky, David S; Carlozzi, Noelle; Chiaravalloti, Nancy D; Beaumont, Jennifer L; Kisala, Pamela A; Mungas, Dan; Conway, Kevin; Gershon, Richard
2014-07-01
The List Sorting Working Memory Test was designed to assess working memory (WM) as part of the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery. List Sorting is a sequencing task requiring children and adults to sort and sequence stimuli that are presented visually and auditorily. Validation data are presented for 268 participants ages 20 to 85 years. A subset of participants (N=89) was retested 7 to 21 days later. As expected, the List Sorting Test had moderately high correlations with other measures of working memory and executive functioning (convergent validity) but a low correlation with a test of receptive vocabulary (discriminant validity). Furthermore, List Sorting demonstrates expected changes over the age span and has excellent test-retest reliability. Collectively, these results provide initial support for the construct validity of the List Sorting Working Memory Measure as a measure of working memory. However, the relationship between the List Sorting Test and general executive function has yet to be determined.
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Detection of the Number of Changes in a Display in Working Memory
Cowan, Nelson; Hardman, Kyle; Saults, J. Scott; Blume, Christopher L.; Clark, Katherine M.; Sunday, Mackenzie A.
2015-01-01
Here we examine a new task to assess working memory for visual arrays in which the participant must judge how many items changed from a studied array to a test array. As a clue to processing, on some trials in the first two experiments, participants carried out a metamemory judgment in which they were to decide how many items were in working memory. Trial-to-trial fluctuations in these working memory storage judgments correlated with performance fluctuations within an individual, indicating a need to include trial-to-trial variation within capacity models (through either capacity fluctuation or some other attention parameter). Mathematical modeling of the results achieved a good fit to a complex pattern of results, suggesting that working memory capacity limits can apply even to judgments that involve an entire array rather than just a single item that may have changed, thus providing the expected conscious access to at least some of the contents of working memory. PMID:26375783
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Berninger, Virginia W; Abbott, Robert D; Swanson, H Lee; Lovitt, Dan; Trivedi, Pam; Lin, Shin-Ju Cindy; Gould, Laura; Youngstrom, Marci; Shimada, Shirley; Amtmann, Dagmar
2010-04-01
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the contribution of working memory at the word and sentence levels of language to reading and writing outcomes. Measures of working memory at the word and sentence levels, reading and writing, were administered to 2nd (N = 122), 4th (N = 222), and 6th (N = 105) graders. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate whether the 2 predictor working memory factors contributed unique variance beyond their shared covariance to each of 5 outcome factors: handwriting, spelling, composing, word reading, and reading comprehension. At each grade level, except for handwriting and composing in 6th grade, the word-level working memory factor contributed unique variance to each reading and writing outcome. The text-level working memory factor contributed unique variance to reading comprehension in 4th and 6th grade. The clinical significance of these findings for assessment and intervention is discussed.
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NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB): The List Sorting Test to Measure Working Memory
Tulsky, David S.; Carlozzi, Noelle; Chiaravalloti, Nancy D.; Beaumont, Jennifer L.; Kisala, Pamela A.; Mungas, Dan; Conway, Kevin; Gershon, Richard
2015-01-01
The List Sorting Working Memory Test was designed to assess working memory (WM) as part of the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery. List Sorting is a sequencing task requiring children and adults to sort and sequence stimuli that are presented visually and auditorily. Validation data are presented for 268 participants ages 20 to 85 years. A subset of participants (N=89) was retested 7 to 21 days later. As expected, the List Sorting Test had moderately high correlations with other measures of working memory and executive functioning (convergent validity) but a low correlation with a test of receptive vocabulary (discriminant validity). Furthermore, List Sorting demonstrates expected changes over the age span and has excellent test-retest reliability. Collectively, these results provide initial support the construct validity of the List Sorting Working Memory Measure as a measure of working memory. However, the relation between the List Sorting Test and general executive function has yet to be determined. PMID:24959983
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What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?
Cowan, Nelson
2008-01-01
In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rather encouraging regarding the existence of both decay and capacity limits. Working memory has been conceived and defined in three different, slightly discrepant ways: as short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks, as a multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in short-term memory, and as the use of attention to manage short-term memory. Regardless of the definition, there are some measures of memory in the short term that seem routine and do not correlate well with cognitive aptitudes and other measures (those usually identified with the term “working memory”) that seem more attention demanding and do correlate well with these aptitudes. The evidence is evaluated and placed within a theoretical framework depicted in Fig. 1. PMID:18394484
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Assessing the associative deficit of older adults in long-term and short-term/working memory.
Chen, Tina; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe
2012-09-01
Older adults exhibit a deficit in associative long-term memory relative to younger adults. However, the literature is inconclusive regarding whether this deficit is attenuated in short-term/working memory. To elucidate the issue, three experiments assessed younger and older adults' item and interitem associative memory and the effects of several variables that might potentially contribute to the inconsistent pattern of results in previous studies. In Experiment 1, participants were tested on item and associative recognition memory with both long-term and short-term retention intervals in a single, continuous recognition paradigm. There was an associative deficit for older adults in the short-term and long-term intervals. Using only short-term intervals, Experiment 2 utilized mixed and blocked test designs to examine the effect of test event salience. Blocking the test did not attenuate the age-related associative deficit seen in the mixed test blocks. Finally, an age-related associative deficit was found in Experiment 3, under both sequential and simultaneous presentation conditions. Even while accounting for some methodological issues, the associative deficit of older adults is evident in short-term/working memory.
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The Effects of Maltreatment in Childhood on Working Memory Capacity in Adulthood
Dodaj, Arta; Krajina, Marijana; Sesar, Kristina; Šimić, Nataša
2017-01-01
The aim of this study was to research the relation between exposure to maltreatment in childhood and working memory capacity in adulthood. A survey among 376 females in the age between 16 and 67 was administered. Exposure to maltreatment in childhood (sexual, physical and psychological abuse, neglect and witnessing family violence) was assessed retrospectively using the Child Maltreatment Questionnaire (Karlović, Buljan-Flander, & Vranić, 2001), whilst the Working Memory Questionnaire (Vallat-Azouvi, Pradat-Diehl, & Azouvi, 2012) was used to assess working memory capacity (recalling verbal information, numerical information, attention ability and executive functioning). The results suggest a significantly greater prevalence of physical abuse and witnessing family violence in comparison to other forms of maltreatment in childhood. Psychological abuse and witnessing family violence have shown themselves to be statistically significant predictors for deficits in total working memory capacity, verbal recall and attention ability. The results suggest that traumatic experiences during childhood, such as abuse, may trigger particular cognitive changes which may be reflected in adulthood. It is, therefore, exceedingly important to conduct further research in order to contribute to the understanding of the correlation between cognitive difficulties and maltreatment in childhood. PMID:29358978
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Cognitive control components and speech symptoms in people with schizophrenia.
Becker, Theresa M; Cicero, David C; Cowan, Nelson; Kerns, John G
2012-03-30
Previous schizophrenia research suggests poor cognitive control is associated with schizophrenia speech symptoms. However, cognitive control is a broad construct. Two important cognitive control components are poor goal maintenance and poor verbal working memory storage. In the current research, people with schizophrenia (n=45) performed three cognitive tasks that varied in their goal maintenance and verbal working memory storage demands. Speech symptoms were assessed using clinical rating scales, ratings of disorganized speech from typed transcripts, and self-reported disorganization. Overall, alogia was associated with both goal maintenance and verbal working memory tasks. Objectively rated disorganized speech was associated with poor goal maintenance and with a task that included both goal maintenance and verbal working memory storage demands. In contrast, self-reported disorganization was unrelated to either amount of objectively rated disorganized speech or to cognitive control task performance, instead being associated with negative mood symptoms. Overall, our results suggest that alogia is associated with both poor goal maintenance and poor verbal working memory storage and that disorganized speech is associated with poor goal maintenance. In addition, patients' own assessment of their disorganization is related to negative mood, but perhaps not to objective disorganized speech or to cognitive control task performance. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
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The Effects of Maltreatment in Childhood on Working Memory Capacity in Adulthood.
Dodaj, Arta; Krajina, Marijana; Sesar, Kristina; Šimić, Nataša
2017-11-01
The aim of this study was to research the relation between exposure to maltreatment in childhood and working memory capacity in adulthood. A survey among 376 females in the age between 16 and 67 was administered. Exposure to maltreatment in childhood (sexual, physical and psychological abuse, neglect and witnessing family violence) was assessed retrospectively using the Child Maltreatment Questionnaire (Karlović, Buljan-Flander, & Vranić, 2001), whilst the Working Memory Questionnaire (Vallat-Azouvi, Pradat-Diehl, & Azouvi, 2012) was used to assess working memory capacity (recalling verbal information, numerical information, attention ability and executive functioning). The results suggest a significantly greater prevalence of physical abuse and witnessing family violence in comparison to other forms of maltreatment in childhood. Psychological abuse and witnessing family violence have shown themselves to be statistically significant predictors for deficits in total working memory capacity, verbal recall and attention ability. The results suggest that traumatic experiences during childhood, such as abuse, may trigger particular cognitive changes which may be reflected in adulthood. It is, therefore, exceedingly important to conduct further research in order to contribute to the understanding of the correlation between cognitive difficulties and maltreatment in childhood.
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The paced auditory serial addition test for working memory assessment: Psychometric properties
Nikravesh, Maryam; Jafari, Zahra; Mehrpour, Masoud; Kazemi, Roozbeh; Amiri Shavaki, Younes; Hossienifar, Shamim; Azizi, Mohamad Parsa
2017-01-01
Background: The paced auditory serial addition test (PASAT) was primarily developed to assess the effects of traumatic brain injury on cognitive functioning. Working memory (WM) is one of the most important aspects of cognitive function, and WM impairment is one of the clinically remarkable signs of aphasia. To develop the Persian version of PASAT, an initial version was used in individuals with aphasia (IWA). Methods: In this study, 25 individuals with aphasia (29-60 years) and 85 controls (18-60 years) were included. PASAT was presented in the form of recorded 61 single-digit numbers (1 to 9). The participants repeatedly added the 2 recent digits. The psychometric properties of PASAT including convergent validity (using the digit memory span tasks), divergent validity (using results in the control group and IWA group), and face validity were investigated. Test-retest reliability was considered as well. Results: The relationship between the PASAT and digit memory span tests was moderate to strong in the control group (forward digit memory span test: r= 0.52, p< 0.0001; backward digit memory span test: r = 0.48, p< 0.0001). A strong relationship was found in IWA (forward digit memory span test: r= 0.72, p< 0.0001; backward digit memory span test: r= 0.53, p= 0.006). Also, strong testretest reliability (intraclass correlation= 0.95, p< 0.0001) was observed. Conclusion: According to our results, the PASAT is a valid and reliable test to assess working memory, particularly in IWA. It could be used as a feasible tool for clinical and research applications. PMID:29445690
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Selective white matter pathology induces a specific impairment in spatial working memory.
Coltman, Robin; Spain, Aisling; Tsenkina, Yanina; Fowler, Jill H; Smith, Jessica; Scullion, Gillian; Allerhand, Mike; Scott, Fiona; Kalaria, Rajesh N; Ihara, Masafumi; Daumas, Stephanie; Deary, Ian J; Wood, Emma; McCulloch, James; Horsburgh, Karen
2011-12-01
The integrity of the white matter is critical in regulating efficient neuronal communication and maintaining cognitive function. Damage to brain white matter putatively contributes to age-related cognitive decline. There is a growing interest in animal models from which the mechanistic basis of white matter pathology in aging can be elucidated but to date there has been a lack of systematic behavior and pathology in the same mice. Anatomically widespread, diffuse white matter damage was induced, in 3 different cohorts of C57Bl/6J mice, by chronic hypoperfusion produced by bilateral carotid stenosis. A comprehensive assessment of spatial memory (spatial reference learning and memory; cohort 1) and serial spatial learning and memory (cohort 2) using the water maze, and spatial working memory (cohort 3) using the 8-arm radial arm maze, was conducted. In parallel, a systematic assessment of white matter components (myelin, axon, glia) was conducted using immunohistochemical markers (myelin-associated glycoprotein [MAG], degraded myelin basic protein [dMBP], anti-amyloid precursor protein [APP], anti-ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule [Iba-1]). Ischemic neuronal perikarya damage, assessed using histology (hematoxylin and eosin; H&E), was absent in all shams but was present in some hypoperfused mice (2/11 in cohort 1, 4/14 in cohort 2, and 17/24 in cohort 3). All animals with neuronal perikaryal damage were excluded from further study. Diffuse white matter damage occurred, throughout the brain, in all hypoperfused mice in each cohort and was essentially absent in sham-operated controls. There was a selective impairment in spatial working memory, with all other measures of spatial memory remaining intact, in hypoperfused mice with selective white matter damage. The results demonstrate that diffuse white matter pathology, in the absence of gray matter damage, induces a selective impairment of spatial working memory. This highlights the importance of assessing parallel pathology and behavior in the same mice. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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Working memory training in older adults: Bayesian evidence supporting the absence of transfer.
Guye, Sabrina; von Bastian, Claudia C
2017-12-01
The question of whether working memory training leads to generalized improvements in untrained cognitive abilities is a longstanding and heatedly debated one. Previous research provides mostly ambiguous evidence regarding the presence or absence of transfer effects in older adults. Thus, to draw decisive conclusions regarding the effectiveness of working memory training interventions, methodologically sound studies with larger sample sizes are needed. In this study, we investigated whether or not a computer-based working memory training intervention induced near and far transfer in a large sample of 142 healthy older adults (65 to 80 years). Therefore, we randomly assigned participants to either the experimental group, which completed 25 sessions of adaptive, process-based working memory training, or to the active, adaptive visual search control group. Bayesian linear mixed-effects models were used to estimate performance improvements on the level of abilities, using multiple indicator tasks for near (working memory) and far transfer (fluid intelligence, shifting, and inhibition). Our data provided consistent evidence supporting the absence of near transfer to untrained working memory tasks and the absence of far transfer effects to all of the assessed abilities. Our results suggest that working memory training is not an effective way to improve general cognitive functioning in old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get at the Essence of Cognitive Growth?
Cowan, Nelson
2016-03-01
The theoretical and practical understanding of cognitive development depends on working memory, the limited information temporarily accessible for such daily activities as language processing and problem solving. In this article, I assess many possible reasons that working memory performance improves with development. A first glance at the literature leads to the weird impression that working memory capacity reaches adult levels during infancy but then regresses during childhood. In place of that unlikely explanation, I consider how infant studies may lead to overestimates of capacity if one neglects supports that the tasks provide, compared with adult-level tasks. Further development of working memory during the school years is also considered. Many investigators have come to suspect that working memory capacity may be constant after infancy because of various factors such as developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation. With each of these factors controlled, though, working memory still improves during the school years. Suggestions are made for research to bridge the gap between infant and child developmental research, to understand the focus and control of attention in working memory and how these skills develop, and to pinpoint the nature of capacity and its development from infancy forward. © The Author(s) 2016.
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Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth?
Cowan, Nelson
2015-01-01
Our theoretical and practical understanding of cognitive development depends on working memory, the limited information temporarily accessible for such daily activities as language processing and problem-solving. Here I assess many possible reasons why working memory performance improves with development. A first glance at the literature leads to the weird impression that working memory capacity reaches adult-like levels during infancy but then regresses during childhood. In place of that unlikely surmise, I consider how infant studies may lead to overestimates of capacity if one neglects supports that the tasks provide, compared to adult-like tasks. Further development of working memory during the school years is also considered. Various confounding factors have led many investigators to suspect that working memory capacity may be constant after infancy; the factors include developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation. With each of these factors controlled, though, working memory still improves during the school years. Suggestions are made for research to bridge the gap between infant and child developmental research, to understand the focus and control of attention in working memory and how they develop, and to pinpoint the nature of capacity and its development from infancy on. PMID:26993277
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Working memory performance inversely predicts spontaneous delta and theta-band scaling relations.
Euler, Matthew J; Wiltshire, Travis J; Niermeyer, Madison A; Butner, Jonathan E
2016-04-15
Electrophysiological studies have strongly implicated theta-band activity in human working memory processes. Concurrently, work on spontaneous, non-task-related oscillations has revealed the presence of long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) within sub-bands of the ongoing EEG, and has begun to demonstrate their functional significance. However, few studies have yet assessed the relation of LRTCs (also called scaling relations) to individual differences in cognitive abilities. The present study addressed the intersection of these two literatures by investigating the relation of narrow-band EEG scaling relations to individual differences in working memory ability, with a particular focus on the theta band. Fifty-four healthy adults completed standardized assessments of working memory and separate recordings of their spontaneous, non-task-related EEG. Scaling relations were quantified in each of the five classical EEG frequency bands via the estimation of the Hurst exponent obtained from detrended fluctuation analysis. A multilevel modeling framework was used to characterize the relation of working memory performance to scaling relations as a function of general scalp location in Cartesian space. Overall, results indicated an inverse relationship between both delta and theta scaling relations and working memory ability, which was most prominent at posterior sensors, and was independent of either spatial or individual variability in band-specific power. These findings add to the growing literature demonstrating the relevance of neural LRTCs for understanding brain functioning, and support a construct- and state-dependent view of their functional implications. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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MacNamara, Annmarie; Jackson, T Bryan; Fitzgerald, Jacklynn M; Hajcak, Greg; Phan, K Luan
2018-04-22
Internalizing disorders such as anxiety may be characterized by an imbalance between bottom-up (stimulus-driven) and top-down (goal-directed) attention. The late positive potential (LPP) can be used to assess these processes when task-irrelevant negative and neutral pictures are presented within a working memory paradigm. Prior work using this paradigm has found that working memory load reduces the picture-elicited LPP across participants; however, anxious individuals showed a reduced effect of working memory load on the LPP, suggesting increased distractibility. The current study assessed transdiagnostic associations between specific symptom dimensions of anxiety, the LPP, and behavior in a clinically representative, heterogeneous group of 76 treatment-seeking patients with internalizing disorders, who performed a working memory task interspersed with negative and neutral pictures. As expected, negative pictures enhanced the LPP, and working memory load reduced the LPP. Participants with higher social anxiety showed increased LPPs to negative stimuli during early and late portions of picture presentation. Panic symptoms were associated with reduced LPPs to negative pictures compared with neutral pictures as well as a reduced effect of working memory load on the LPP during the late time window. Reduced positive affect was associated with greater behavioral interference from negative pictures. Hypervigilance for negative stimuli was uniquely explained by social anxiety symptoms, whereas panic symptoms were associated with the opposing effect-blunted processing/avoidance of these stimuli. Panic symptoms were uniquely associated with reduced top-down control. Results reveal distinct associations between neural reactivity and anxiety symptom dimensions that transcend traditional diagnostic boundaries. Copyright © 2018 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Mette, Christian; Grabemann, Marco; Zimmermann, Marco; Strunz, Laura; Scherbaum, Norbert; Wiltfang, Jens; Kis, Bernhard
2015-01-01
Altered time reproduction is exhibited by patients with adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It remains unclear whether memory capacity influences the ability of adults with ADHD to reproduce time intervals. We conducted a behavioral study on 30 ADHD patients who were medicated with methylphenidate, 29 unmedicated adult ADHD patients and 32 healthy controls (HCs). We assessed time reproduction using six time intervals (1 s, 4 s, 6 s, 10 s, 24 s and 60 s) and assessed memory performance using the Wechsler memory scale. The patients with ADHD exhibited lower memory performance scores than the HCs. No significant differences in the raw scores for any of the time intervals (p > .05), with the exception of the variability at the short time intervals (1 s, 4 s and 6 s) (p < .01), were found between the groups. The overall analyses failed to reveal any significant correlations between time reproduction at any of the time intervals examined in the time reproduction task and working memory performance (p > .05). We detected no findings indicating that working memory might influence time reproduction in adult patients with ADHD. Therefore, further studies concerning time reproduction and memory capacity among adult patients with ADHD must be performed to verify and replicate the present findings.
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Afshar, Mohamad Reza; Ghorbani, Ali; Rashedi, Vahid; Jalilevand, Nahid; Kamali, Mohamad
2017-10-01
The aim of this study was to compare working memory span in Persian-speaking preschool children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and their typically speaking peers. Additionally, the study aimed to examine Non-Word Repetition (NWR), Forward Digit Span (FDS) and Backward Digit Span (BDS) in four groups of children with varying severity levels of SSD. The participants in this study comprised 35 children with SSD and 35 typically developing (TD) children -matched for age and sex-as a control group. The participants were between the age range of 48 and 72 months. Two components of working memory including phonological loop and central executive were compared between two groups. We used two tasks (NWR and FDS) to assess phonological loop component, and one task (BDS) to assess central executive component. Percentage of correct consonants (PCC) was used to calculate the severity of SSD. Significant differences were observed between the two groups in all tasks that assess working memory (p < 0.001). In addition, the comparison of the phonological loop of working memory between the various severity groups indicated significant differences between different severities of both NWR and FDS tasks among the SSD children (p < 0.001). Nevertheless, comparison of the central executive between various severity groups, which was assessed with the BDS task, did not show any significant differences (p > 0.05). The result showed that PCC scores in TD children were associated with NWR (p < 0.001), FDS (p = 0.001), and BDS (p < 0.001). Furthermore, PCC scores in SSD children were associated with NWR and FDS (p < 0.001), but not with BDS (p > 0.05). The working memory skills were weaker in SSD children, in comparison to TD children. In addition, children with varying levels of severity of SSD differed in terms of NWR and FSD, but not BDS. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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van Geldorp, Bonnie; Bouman, Zita; Hendriks, Marc P H; Kessels, Roy P C
2014-03-01
The medial temporal lobe is an important structure for long-term memory formation, but its role in working memory is less clear. Recent studies have shown hippocampal involvement during working memory tasks requiring binding of information. It is yet unclear whether this is limited to tasks containing spatial features. The present study contrasted three binding conditions and one single-item condition in patients with unilateral anterior temporal lobectomy. A group of 43 patients with temporal lobectomy (23 left; 20 right) and 20 matched controls were examined with a working memory task assessing spatial relational binding (object-location), non-spatial relational binding (object-object), conjunctive binding (object-colour) and working memory for single items. We varied the delay period (3 or 6s), as there is evidence showing that delay length may modulate working memory performance. The results indicate that performance was worse for patients than for controls in both relational binding conditions, whereas patients were unimpaired in conjunctive binding. Single-item memory was found to be marginally impaired, due to a deficit on long-delay trials only. In conclusion, working memory binding deficits are found in patients with unilateral anterior temporal lobectomy. The role of the medial temporal lobe in working memory is not limited to tasks containing spatial features. Rather, it seems to be involved in relational binding, but not in conjunctive binding. The medial temporal lobe gets involved when working memory capacity does not suffice, for example when relations have to be maintained or when the delay period is long. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Rudebeck, Sarah R.; Bor, Daniel; Ormond, Angharad; O’Reilly, Jill X.; Lee, Andy C. H.
2012-01-01
One current challenge in cognitive training is to create a training regime that benefits multiple cognitive domains, including episodic memory, without relying on a large battery of tasks, which can be time-consuming and difficult to learn. By giving careful consideration to the neural correlates underlying episodic and working memory, we devised a computerized working memory training task in which neurologically healthy participants were required to monitor and detect repetitions in two streams of spatial information (spatial location and scene identity) presented simultaneously (i.e. a dual n-back paradigm). Participants’ episodic memory abilities were assessed before and after training using two object and scene recognition memory tasks incorporating memory confidence judgments. Furthermore, to determine the generalizability of the effects of training, we also assessed fluid intelligence using a matrix reasoning task. By examining the difference between pre- and post-training performance (i.e. gain scores), we found that the trainers, compared to non-trainers, exhibited a significant improvement in fluid intelligence after 20 days. Interestingly, pre-training fluid intelligence performance, but not training task improvement, was a significant predictor of post-training fluid intelligence improvement, with lower pre-training fluid intelligence associated with greater post-training gain. Crucially, trainers who improved the most on the training task also showed an improvement in recognition memory as captured by d-prime scores and estimates of recollection and familiarity memory. Training task improvement was a significant predictor of gains in recognition and familiarity memory performance, with greater training improvement leading to more marked gains. In contrast, lower pre-training recollection memory scores, and not training task improvement, led to greater recollection memory performance after training. Our findings demonstrate that practice on a single working memory task can potentially improve aspects of both episodic memory and fluid intelligence, and that an extensive training regime with multiple tasks may not be necessary. PMID:23209740
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Rudebeck, Sarah R; Bor, Daniel; Ormond, Angharad; O'Reilly, Jill X; Lee, Andy C H
2012-01-01
One current challenge in cognitive training is to create a training regime that benefits multiple cognitive domains, including episodic memory, without relying on a large battery of tasks, which can be time-consuming and difficult to learn. By giving careful consideration to the neural correlates underlying episodic and working memory, we devised a computerized working memory training task in which neurologically healthy participants were required to monitor and detect repetitions in two streams of spatial information (spatial location and scene identity) presented simultaneously (i.e. a dual n-back paradigm). Participants' episodic memory abilities were assessed before and after training using two object and scene recognition memory tasks incorporating memory confidence judgments. Furthermore, to determine the generalizability of the effects of training, we also assessed fluid intelligence using a matrix reasoning task. By examining the difference between pre- and post-training performance (i.e. gain scores), we found that the trainers, compared to non-trainers, exhibited a significant improvement in fluid intelligence after 20 days. Interestingly, pre-training fluid intelligence performance, but not training task improvement, was a significant predictor of post-training fluid intelligence improvement, with lower pre-training fluid intelligence associated with greater post-training gain. Crucially, trainers who improved the most on the training task also showed an improvement in recognition memory as captured by d-prime scores and estimates of recollection and familiarity memory. Training task improvement was a significant predictor of gains in recognition and familiarity memory performance, with greater training improvement leading to more marked gains. In contrast, lower pre-training recollection memory scores, and not training task improvement, led to greater recollection memory performance after training. Our findings demonstrate that practice on a single working memory task can potentially improve aspects of both episodic memory and fluid intelligence, and that an extensive training regime with multiple tasks may not be necessary.
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Finke, Kathrin; Schwarzkopf, Wolfgang; Müller, Ulrich; Frodl, Thomas; Müller, Hermann J; Schneider, Werner X; Engel, Rolf R; Riedel, Michael; Möller, Hans-Jürgen; Hennig-Fast, Kristina
2011-11-01
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) persists frequently into adulthood. The decomposition of endophenotypes by means of experimental neuro-cognitive assessment has the potential to improve diagnostic assessment, evaluation of treatment response, and disentanglement of genetic and environmental influences. We assessed four parameters of attentional capacity and selectivity derived from simple psychophysical tasks (verbal report of briefly presented letter displays) and based on a "theory of visual attention." These parameters are mathematically independent, quantitative measures, and previous studies have shown that they are highly sensitive for subtle attention deficits. Potential reductions of attentional capacity, that is, of perceptual processing speed and working memory storage capacity, were assessed with a whole report paradigm. Furthermore, possible pathologies of attentional selectivity, that is, selection of task-relevant information and bias in the spatial distribution of attention, were measured with a partial report paradigm. A group of 30 unmedicated adult ADHD patients and a group of 30 demographically matched healthy controls were tested. ADHD patients showed significant reductions of working memory storage capacity of a moderate to large effect size. Perceptual processing speed, task-based, and spatial selection were unaffected. The results imply a working memory deficit as an important source of behavioral impairments. The theory of visual attention parameter working memory storage capacity might constitute a quantifiable and testable endophenotype of ADHD.
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The polarity-dependent effects of the bilateral brain stimulation on working memory.
Keshvari, Fatemeh; Pouretemad, Hamid-Reza; Ekhtiari, Hamed
2013-01-01
Working memory plays a critical role in cognitive processes which are central to our daily life. Neuroimaging studies have shown that one of the most important areas corresponding to the working memory is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLFPC). This study was aimed to assess whether bilateral modulation of the DLPFC using a noninvasive brain stimulation, namely transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), modifies the working memory function in healthy adults. In a randomized sham-controlled cross-over study, 60 subjects (30 Males) received sham and active tDCS in two subgroups (anode left/cathode right and anode right/cathode left) of the DLPFC. Subjects were presented working memory n-back task while the reaction time and accuracy were recorded. A repeated measures, mixed design ANOVA indicated a significant difference between the type of stimulation (sham vs. active) in anodal stimulation of the left DLPFC with cathodal stimulation of the right DLPFC [F(1,55)= 5.29, P=0.019], but not the inverse polarity worsened accuracy in the 2-back working memory task. There were also no statistically significant changes in speed of working memory [F(1,55)= 0.458,P=0.502] related to type or order of stimulation. The results would imply to a polarity dependence of bilateral tDCS of working memory. Left anodal/ right cathodal stimulation of DLPFC could impair working memory, while the reverser stimulation had no effect. Meaning that bilateral stimulation of DLFC would not be a useful procedure to improve working memory. Further studies are required to understand subtle effects of different tDCS stimulation/inhibition electrode positioning on the working memory.
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University Students With Poor Reading Comprehension: The Hidden Cognitive Processing Deficit.
Georgiou, George K; Das, J P
2015-01-01
The present study aimed to examine the nature of the working memory and general cognitive ability deficits experienced by university students with a specific reading comprehension deficit. A total of 32 university students with poor reading comprehension but average word-reading skills and 60 age-matched controls with no comprehension difficulties participated in the study. The participants were assessed on three verbal working memory tasks that varied in terms of their processing demands and on the Das-Naglieri Cognitive Assessment System, which was used to operationalize intelligence. The results indicated first that the differences between poor and skilled comprehenders on working memory were amplified as the processing demands of the tasks increased. In addition, although poor comprehenders as a group had average intelligence, they experienced significant difficulties in simultaneous and successive processing. Considering that working memory and general cognitive ability are highly correlated processes, these findings suggest that the observed differences between poor and skilled comprehenders are likely a result of a deficient information processing system. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2013.
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Hanson, Jamie L.; Chung, Moo K.; Avants, Brian B.; Rudolph, Karen D.; Shirtcliff, Elizabeth A.; Gee, James C.; Davidson, Richard J.; Pollak, Seth D.
2012-01-01
A large corpus of research indicates exposure to stress impairs cognitive abilities, specifically executive functioning dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC). We collected structural MRI scans (n=61), well-validated assessments of executive functioning, and detailed interviews assessing stress exposure in humans, to examine whether cumulative life stress affected brain morphometry and one type of executive functioning, spatial working memory, during adolescence—a critical time of brain development and reorganization. Analysis of variations in brain structure revealed that cumulative life stress and spatial working memory were related to smaller volumes in the PFC, specifically prefrontal gray and white matter between the anterior cingulate and the frontal poles. Mediation analyses revealed that individual differences in prefrontal volumes accounted for the association between cumulative life stress and spatial working memory. These results suggest that structural changes in the PFC may serve as a mediating mechanism through which greater cumulative life stress engenders decrements in cognitive functioning. PMID:22674267
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Integrative assessment of brain function in PTSD: brain stability and working memory.
Veltmeyer, Melinda D; McFarlane, Alexander C; Bryant, Richard A; Mayo, Therese; Gordon, Evian; Clark, C Richard
2006-03-01
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is characterized by symptoms of hyperarousal, avoidance and intrusive trauma-related memories and deficits in everyday memory and attention. Separate studies in PTSD have found abnormalities in electroencephalogram EEG, in event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral measures of working memory and attention. The present study seeks to determine whether these abnormalities are related and the extent to which they share this relationship with clinical symptoms. EEG data were collected during an eyes-open paradigm and a one-back working memory task. Behavioral and clinical data (CAPS) were also collected. The PTSD group showed signs of altered cortical arousal as indexed by reduced alpha power and an increased theta/alpha ratio, and clinical and physiological measures of arousal were found to be related. The normal relationship between theta power and ERP indices of working memory was not affected in PTSD, with both sets of measures reduced in the disordered group. Medication appeared to underpin a number of abnormal parameters, including P3 amplitude to targets and the accuracy, though not speed, of target detection. The present study helps to overcome a limitation of earlier studies that assess such parameters independently in different groups of patients that vary in factors such as comorbidity, medication status, gender and symptom profile. The present study begins to shed light on the relationship between these measures and suggests that abnormalities in brain working memory may be linked to underlying abnormalities in brain stability.
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Jongen, Peter Joseph; Wesnes, Keith; van Geel, Björn; Pop, Paul; Sanders, Evert; Schrijver, Hans; Visser, Leo H; Gilhuis, H Jacobus; Sinnige, Ludovicus G; Brands, Augustina M
2014-01-01
The role of cognitive domain dysfunction with respect to vocational changes in persons with Clinically Isolated Syndrome (CIS) and early Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (eRRMS) is insufficiently known. We investigated thirty-three patients--14 CIS, 19 eRRMS -, mean (standard deviation [SD]) time since diagnosis 13.5 (4.8) months and mean (SD) Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score 1.3 (1.1). Patients were assessed on the CDR System, a set of automated tests of cognitive function, which yielded scores for Power of Attention (ms), Continuity of Attention (#), Working Memory (SI), Episodic Memory (#) and Speed of Memory (ms). Work-related items and the confounding variables fatigue, depression, disease impact and self-efficacy, were assessed by self-report questionnaires. Patients had poorer Power of Attention compared to normative data (1187 [161.5] vs. 1070 [98.6]; P<0.0001) and slower Speed of Memory (4043 [830.6]) vs. 2937 [586.1]; P<0.0001). Power of Attention (Pearson r = -0.42; P<0.04), Working Memory (r = 0.42; P<0.04) and depression r = -0.41; P<0.05) correlated with number of days worked per week. Fatigue (r = -0.56; P<0.005), self-efficacy (r = 0.56; P<0.005) and disease impact (r = -0.46; P<0.05) correlated with number of hours worked per week. Persons who wished to work less had poorer Power of Attention (1247 vs. 1116 ms; P<0.02), those who wished to change job had poorer Episodic Memory (1.35 vs. 1.57; p<0.03). People who reduced working hours within 12 months after diagnosis had higher fatigue and disease impact, and lower self-efficacy. The findings of this pilot study indicate that one year after the diagnosis of CIS and RRMS Power of Attention and Speed of Memory are reduced, that Power of Attention and Memory are associated with a capability of working less hours, and that fatigue, depression and disease impact may negatively, and self-efficacy positively affect working hours.
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Nozari, Masoumeh; Mansouri, Farshad Alizadeh; Shabani, Mohammad; Nozari, Hojat; Atapour, Nafiseh
2015-07-01
Memory impairment has been documented in MK-801 (NMDA receptor antagonist) model of schizophrenia, but less is known on the rescue and/or differential effects of MK-801 on short- and long-term memories. We determined the effects of MK-801 treatment and/or enriched environment (EE) on acquisition of reference and working memory in developing rats. Female Wistar rats were injected with MK-801 (1 mg/kg) from postnatal days (P) 6-10. Task acquisition, working memory error (WME), and reference memory error (RME) were assessed in an eight-arm radial maze task. Behavioral performance of rats was also tested in an open field test before (P35-P40) and after (P65-P70) radial maze training to assess anxiety and locomotion. EE was applied from birth up to the end of experiments. MK-801 treatment did not influence task acquisition in the radial maze; however, by the end of training, MK-801-treated rats made significantly more WME, but not RME, compared to control rats. Ratio of WME to total error was also significantly higher in MK-801 group. EE prevented MK-801-associated behaviors in the open field but did not exert beneficial effects on working memory deficit in the radial maze task. EE per se affected behavioral performance of rats only in the open field test. Our results suggest that postnatal MK-801 treatment differentially affects working and reference memory in a young brain. Anxiety and hyperactivity associated with MK-801 are observed more severely in adulthood. Dissociation of the positive effects of EE may suggest selective modification of distinct pathways.
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Verbal Working Memory in Children With Cochlear Implants
Caldwell-Tarr, Amanda; Low, Keri E.; Lowenstein, Joanna H.
2017-01-01
Purpose Verbal working memory in children with cochlear implants and children with normal hearing was examined. Participants Ninety-three fourth graders (47 with normal hearing, 46 with cochlear implants) participated, all of whom were in a longitudinal study and had working memory assessed 2 years earlier. Method A dual-component model of working memory was adopted, and a serial recall task measured storage and processing. Potential predictor variables were phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, nonverbal IQ, and several treatment variables. Potential dependent functions were literacy, expressive language, and speech-in-noise recognition. Results Children with cochlear implants showed deficits in storage and processing, similar in size to those at second grade. Predictors of verbal working memory differed across groups: Phonological awareness explained the most variance in children with normal hearing; vocabulary explained the most variance in children with cochlear implants. Treatment variables explained little of the variance. Where potentially dependent functions were concerned, verbal working memory accounted for little variance once the variance explained by other predictors was removed. Conclusions The verbal working memory deficits of children with cochlear implants arise due to signal degradation, which limits their abilities to acquire phonological awareness. That hinders their abilities to store items using a phonological code. PMID:29075747
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Working memory and attentional bias on reinforcing efficacy of food.
Carr, Katelyn A; Epstein, Leonard H
2017-09-01
Reinforcing efficacy of food, or the relationship between food prices and purchasing, is related to obesity status and energy intake in adults. Determining how to allocate resources for food is a decision making process influenced by executive functions. Attention to appetitive cues, as well as working memory capacity, or the ability to flexibly control attention while mentally retaining information, may be important executive functions involved in food purchasing decisions. In two studies, we examined how attention bias to food and working memory capacity are related to reinforcing efficacy of both high energy-dense and low energy-dense foods. The first study examined 48 women of varying body mass index (BMI) and found that the relationship between attentional processes and reinforcing efficacy was moderated by working memory capacity. Those who avoid food cues and had high working memory capacity had the lowest reinforcing efficacy, as compared to those with low working memory capacity. Study 2 systematically replicated the methods of study 1 with assessment of maintained attention in a sample of 48 overweight/obese adults. Results showed the relationship between maintained attention to food cues and reinforcing efficacy was moderated by working memory capacity. Those with a maintained attention to food and high working memory capacity had higher reinforcing efficacy than low working memory capacity individuals. These studies suggest working memory capacity moderated the relationship between different aspects of attention and food reinforcement. Understanding how decision making process are involved in reinforcing efficacy may help to identify future intervention targets. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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The Development of Children's Early Memory Skills
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Haden, Catherine A.; Ornstein, Peter A.; O'Brien, Barbara S.; Elischberger, Holger B.; Tyler, Caroline S.; Burchinal, Margaret J.
2011-01-01
A multitask battery tapping nonverbal memory and language skills was used to assess 60 children at 18, 24, and 30 months of age. Analyses focused on the degree to which language, working memory, and deliberate memory skills were linked concurrently to children's Elicited Imitation task performance and whether the patterns of association varied…
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Wiłkość, Monika; Izdebski, Paweł; Zajac-Lamparska, Ludmiła
2013-01-01
In the last two decades of the last century there has been a shift in the studies on memory. In psychology of memory the criticism of the laboratory approach resulted in development of the ecological approach. One of the effects of this change was to initiate researches on memory that includes plans for the future, which has resulted in the distinction of the concept of prospective memory. Prospective memory is used in many aspects of everyday life. It deals with remembering intentions and plans, it is connected with remembering about specific task or activity in the future. There are three types of PM: event-based prospective memory, time-based prospective memory and activity-based prospective memory. Current research in this field have already established its own paradigm and tools measuring PM and there is still increasing scientific interest in this issue. Prospective memory assessment may be carried out in various ways. Among them, the most frequently used are: a) questionnaires, b) psychological tests, c) experimental procedures. Within the latter, the additional distinction can be introduced for: the experiments conducted under natural conditions and the laboratory procedures. In Polish literature, there are only a few articles on PM. The aim of this work is to review studies on assessment methods of PM. Its neuroanatomical bases and its functioning in different mental disorders are analyzed. The work is aimed to focus clinicians attention on prospective memory as an area which is important for complex diagnosis of cognitive processes.
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Wells, Erica L; Kofler, Michael J; Soto, Elia F; Schaefer, Hillary S; Sarver, Dustin E
2018-01-01
Pediatric ADHD is associated with impairments in working memory, but these deficits often go undetected when using clinic-based tests such as digit span backward. The current study pilot-tested minor administration/scoring modifications to improve digit span backward's construct and predictive validities in a well-characterized sample of children with ADHD. WISC-IV digit span was modified to administer all trials (i.e., ignore discontinue rule) and count digits rather than trials correct. Traditional and modified scores were compared to a battery of criterion working memory (construct validity) and academic achievement tests (predictive validity) for 34 children with ADHD ages 8-13 (M=10.41; 11 girls). Traditional digit span backward scores failed to predict working memory or KTEA-2 achievement (allns). Alternate administration/scoring of digit span backward significantly improved its associations with working memory reordering (r=.58), working memory dual-processing (r=.53), working memory updating (r=.28), and KTEA-2 achievement (r=.49). Consistent with prior work, these findings urge caution when interpreting digit span performance. Minor test modifications may address test validity concerns, and should be considered in future test revisions. Digit span backward becomes a valid measure of working memory at exactly the point that testing is traditionally discontinued. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Muscular and Aerobic Fitness, Working Memory, and Academic Achievement in Children.
Kao, Shih-Chun; Westfall, Daniel R; Parks, Andrew C; Pontifex, Matthew B; Hillman, Charles H
2017-03-01
This study investigated the relationship between aerobic and muscular fitness with working memory and academic achievement in preadolescent children. Seventy-nine 9- to 11-yr-old children completed an aerobic fitness assessment using a graded exercise test; a muscular fitness assessment consisting of upper body, lower body, and core exercises; a serial n-back task to assess working memory; and an academic achievement test of mathematics and reading. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that after controlling for demographic variables (age, sex, grade, IQ, socioeconomic status), aerobic fitness was associated with greater response accuracy and d' in the 2-back condition and increased mathematic performance in algebraic functions. Muscular fitness was associated with increased response accuracy and d', and longer reaction time in the 2-back condition. Further, the associations of muscular fitness with response accuracy and d' in the 2-back condition were independent of aerobic fitness. The current findings suggest the differential relationships between the aerobic and the muscular aspects of physical fitness with working memory and academic achievement. With the majority of research focusing on childhood health benefits of aerobic fitness, this study suggests the importance of muscular fitness to cognitive health during preadolescence.
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Psychotic Experiences, Working Memory, and the Developing Brain: A Multimodal Neuroimaging Study
Fonville, Leon; Cohen Kadosh, Kathrin; Drakesmith, Mark; Dutt, Anirban; Zammit, Stanley; Mollon, Josephine; Reichenberg, Abraham; Lewis, Glyn; Jones, Derek K.; David, Anthony S.
2015-01-01
Psychotic experiences (PEs) occur in the general population, especially in children and adolescents, and are associated with poor psychosocial outcomes, impaired cognition, and increased risk of transition to psychosis. It is unknown how the presence and persistence of PEs during early adulthood affects cognition and brain function. The current study assessed working memory as well as brain function and structure in 149 individuals, with and without PEs, drawn from a population cohort. Observer-rated PEs were classified as persistent or transient on the basis of longitudinal assessments. Working memory was assessed using the n-back task during fMRI. Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) was used to characterize frontoparietal network configuration and voxel-based morphometry was utilized to examine gray matter. Those with persistent, but not transient, PEs performed worse on the n-back task, compared with controls, yet showed no significant differences in regional brain activation or brain structure. DCM analyses revealed greater emphasis on frontal connectivity within a frontoparietal network in those with PEs compared with controls. We propose that these findings portray an altered configuration of working memory function in the brain, potentially indicative of an adaptive response to atypical development associated with the manifestation of PEs. PMID:26286920
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Piccardi, L; Nori, R; Boccia, M; Barbetti, S; Verde, P; Guariglia, C; Ferlazzo, F
2015-08-01
In the present study, we used single- and dual-task conditions to investigate the nature of topographical working memory to better understand what type of task can hamper performance during navigation. During dual-task conditions, we considered four different sources of interference: motor (M), spatial motor (SM), verbal (i.e. articulatory suppression AS) and spatial environmental (SE). In order to assess the nature of topographical working memory, we used the Walking Corsi Test, asking the participants to perform two tasks simultaneously (M, SM, AS and SE). Our results showed that only spatial-environmental interference hampers the execution of a topographical working memory task, suggesting a task-domain-specific effect. We also found general gender differences in the topographical working memory capabilities: men were more proficient than women, regardless of the type of interferences. However, like men, women performed worse when a spatial-environmental interference was present.
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Working Memory Updating as a Predictor of Academic Attainment
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lechuga, M. Teresa; Pelegrina, Santiago; Pelaez, Jose L.; Martin-Puga, M. Eva; Justicia, M. Jose
2016-01-01
There is growing evidence supporting the importance of executive functions, and specifically working memory updating (WMU), for children's academic achievement. This study aimed to assess the specific contribution of updating to the prediction of academic performance. Two updating tasks, which included different updating components, were…
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Trost, Sarah; Gruber, Oliver
2012-01-01
Recent functional neuroimaging studies have provided evidence that human verbal working memory is represented by two complementary neural systems, a left lateralized premotor-parietal network implementing articulatory rehearsal and a presumably phylogenetically older bilateral anterior-prefrontal/inferior-parietal network subserving non-articulatory maintenance of phonological information. In order to corroborate these findings from functional neuroimaging, we performed a targeted behavioural study in patients with very selective and circumscribed brain lesions to key regions suggested to support these different subcomponents of human verbal working memory. Within a sample of over 500 neurological patients assessed with high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging, we identified 2 patients with corresponding brain lesions, one with an isolated lesion to Broca's area and the other with a selective lesion bilaterally to the anterior middle frontal gyrus. These 2 patients as well as groups of age-matched healthy controls performed two circuit-specific verbal working memory tasks. In this way, we systematically assessed the hypothesized selective behavioural effects of these brain lesions on the different subcomponents of verbal working memory in terms of a double dissociation. Confirming prior findings, the lesion to Broca's area led to reduced performance under articulatory rehearsal, whereas the non-articulatory maintenance of phonological information was unimpaired. Conversely, the bifrontopolar brain lesion was associated with impaired non-articulatory phonological working memory, whereas performance under articulatory rehearsal was unaffected. The present experimental neuropsychological study in patients with specific and circumscribed brain lesions confirms the hypothesized double dissociation of two complementary brain systems underlying verbal working memory in humans. In particular, the results demonstrate the functional relevance of the anterior prefrontal cortex for non-articulatory maintenance of phonological information and, in this way, provide further support for the evolutionary-based functional-neuroanatomical model of human working memory. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel.
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Brunyé, Tad T; Moran, Joseph M; Holmes, Amanda; Mahoney, Caroline R; Taylor, Holly A
2017-04-01
The human extrastriate cortex contains a region critically involved in face detection and memory, the right fusiform gyrus. The present study evaluated whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting this anatomical region would selectively influence memory for faces versus non-face objects (houses). Anodal tDCS targeted the right fusiform gyrus (Brodmann's Area 37), with the anode at electrode site PO10, and cathode at FP2. Two stimulation conditions were compared in a repeated-measures design: 0.5mA versus 1.5mA intensity; a separate control group received no stimulation. Participants completed a working memory task for face and house stimuli, varying in memory load from 1 to 4 items. Individual differences measures assessed trait-based differences in facial recognition skills. Results showed 1.5mA intensity stimulation (versus 0.5mA and control) increased performance at high memory loads, but only with faces. Lower overall working memory capacity predicted a positive impact of tDCS. Results provide support for the notion of functional specialization of the right fusiform regions for maintaining face (but not non-face object) stimuli in working memory, and further suggest that low intensity electrical stimulation of this region may enhance demanding face working memory performance particularly in those with relatively poor baseline working memory skills. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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Kirschmann, Erin K; McCalley, Daniel M; Edwards, Caitlyn M; Torregrossa, Mary M
2017-01-01
Marijuana is a prevalent illicit substance used by adolescents, and several studies have indicated that adolescent use can lead to long-term cognitive deficits including problems with attention and memory. However, preclinical animal studies that observe cognitive deficits after cannabinoid exposure during adolescence utilize experimenter administration of doses of cannabinoids that may exceed what an organism would choose to take, suggesting that contingency and dose are critical factors that need to be addressed in translational models of consequences of cannabinoid exposure. Indeed, we recently developed an adolescent cannabinoid self-administration paradigm in male rats, and found that prior adolescent self-administration of the cannabinoid receptor agonist WIN55,212-2 (WIN) resulted in improved working memory performance in adulthood. In addition, the doses self-administered were not as high as those that are found to produce memory deficits. However, given known sex differences in both drug self-administration and learning and memory processes, it is possible that cannabinoid self-administration could have different cognitive consequences in females. Therefore, we aimed to explore the effects of self-administered vs. experimenter-administered WIN in adolescent female rats on adult cognitive function. Female rats were trained to self-administer WIN daily throughout adolescence (postnatal day 34-59). A control group self-administered vehicle solution. The acute effects of adolescent WIN self-administration on memory were determined using a short-term spatial memory test 24 h after final SA session; and the long-term effects on cognitive performance were assessed during protracted abstinence in adulthood using a delayed-match-to-sample working memory task. In a separate experiment, females were given daily intraperitoneal (IP) injections of a low or high dose of WIN, corresponding to self-administered and typical experimenter-administered doses, respectively, or its vehicle during adolescence and working memory was assessed under drug-free conditions in adulthood. While self-administration of WIN in adolescence had no significant effects on short-term spatial memory or adult working memory, experimenter administration of WIN resulted in improved adult working memory performance that was more pronounced in the low dose group. Thus, low-dose adolescent WIN exposure, whether self-administered or experimenter-administered, results in either improvements or no change in adult working memory performance in female rats, similar to previous results found in males.
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Dissecting contributions of prefrontal cortex and fusiform face area to face working memory.
Druzgal, T Jason; D'Esposito, Mark
2003-08-15
Interactions between prefrontal cortex (PFC) and stimulus-specific visual cortical association areas are hypothesized to mediate visual working memory in behaving monkeys. To clarify the roles for homologous regions in humans, event-related fMRI was used to assess neural activity in PFC and fusiform face area (FFA) of subjects performing a delay-recognition task for faces. In both PFC and FFA, activity increased parametrically with memory load during encoding and maintenance of face stimuli, despite quantitative differences in the magnitude of activation. Moreover, timing differences in PFC and FFA activation during memory encoding and retrieval implied a context dependence in the flow of neural information. These results support existing neurophysiological models of visual working memory developed in the nonhuman primate.
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Mélan, Claudine; Cascino, Nadine
2014-01-01
The present contribution presents two field studies combining tools and methods from cognitive psychology and from occupational psychology in order to perform a thorough investigation of workload in employees. Cognitive load theory proposes to distinguish different load categories of working memory, in a context of instruction. Intrinsic load is inherent to the task, extraneous load refers to components of a learning environment that may be modified to reduce total load, and germane load enables schemas construction and thus efficient learning. We showed previously that this theoretical framework may be successfully extended to working memory tasks in non-instructional designs. Other theoretical models, issued from the field of occupational psychology, account for an individual's perception of work demands or requirements in the context of different psychosocial features of the (work) environment. Combining these approaches is difficult as workload assessment by job-perception questionnaires explore an individual's overall job-perception over a large time-period, whereas cognitive load investigations in working memory tasks are typically performed within short time-periods. We proposed an original methodology enabling investigation of workload and load factors in a comparable time-frame. We report two field studies investigating workload on different shift-phases and between work-shifts, with two custom-made tools. The first one enabled workload assessment by manipulating intrinsic load (task difficulty) and extraneous load (time pressure) in a working-memory task. The second tool was a questionnaire based on the theoretical concepts of work-demands, control, and psychosocial support. Two additional dimensions suspected to contribute to job-perception, i.e., work-family conflicts and availability of human and technical resources were also explored. Results of workload assessments were discussed in light of operators' alertness and job-performance.
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Hintze, Beata; Borkowska, Alina
2011-01-01
The aim of the study was to assess the correlation between the level of working memory and executive functions impairment in schizophrenic subjects in their partial remission period and the intensity of psychopathological symptoms measured by PANSS scale. 45 patients with schizophrenia were included in the study (28 male and 17 female), aged 18-46 (mean 27 +/- 7) years during partial remission of psychopathological symptoms (PANSS < 70). The control group consisted in 35 age, gender and education matched healthy persons (13 male i 22 female), aged 21-49 (mean 30 +/- 8) years. To assess the intensity of psychopathological symptoms the PANSS scale was used, neuropsychological assessment included the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), N-back test and Stroop test from the Vienna Tests Battery. In schizophrenic patients in partial remission period, the significant dysfunctions of working memory and executive functions show association with negative (not positive) schizophrenic symptoms.
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Mahoney, James J.; Kalechstein, Ari D.; Verrico, Christopher D.; Arnoudse, Nicholas M.; Shapiro, Benjamin A.; De La Garza, Richard
2015-01-01
Long-term cocaine use is a risk factor for the onset of neurocognitive impairment. This study sought to determine whether the cholinesterase inhibitor rivastigmine could improve neurocognitive performance in cocaine-dependent individuals. Cocaine-dependent individuals who were not seeking treatment at the time of enrollment in the study were randomly assigned to receive placebo (n = 16), rivastigmine 3 mg (n = 13), or rivastigmine 6 mg (n = 12). The baseline neurocognitive assessment, which included measures of attention/information processing (as measured by the Continuous Performance Task-II (CPT-II)), verbal learning/episodic memory (as measured by the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R)), and working memory (as measured by the Dual N-Back Task), was conducted prior to the administration of study medication (Day 0). The follow-up assessment was conducted on Day 8 after the participants had received rivastigmine or placebo for 7 days (Day 2–8). Rivastigmine administration significantly improved performance on one measure of working memory span (mean n-back span). This study provides additional data showing that cocaine-associated neurocognitive impairment, specifically working memory deficits, can be remediated, at least to some degree. PMID:24239594
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Mahoney, James J; Kalechstein, Ari D; Verrico, Christopher D; Arnoudse, Nicholas M; Shapiro, Benjamin A; De La Garza, Richard
2014-04-03
Long-term cocaine use is a risk factor for the onset of neurocognitive impairment. This study sought to determine whether the cholinesterase inhibitor rivastigmine could improve neurocognitive performance in cocaine-dependent individuals. Cocaine-dependent individuals who were not seeking treatment at the time of enrollment in the study were randomly assigned to receive placebo (n=16), rivastigmine 3mg (n=13), or rivastigmine 6mg (n=12). The baseline neurocognitive assessment, which included measures of attention/information processing (as measured by the Continuous Performance Task-II (CPT-II)), verbal learning/episodic memory (as measured by the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLT-R)), and working memory (as measured by the Dual N-Back Task), was conducted prior to the administration of study medication (Day 0). The follow-up assessment was conducted on Day 8 after the participants had received rivastigmine or placebo for 7days (Day 2-8). Rivastigmine administration significantly improved performance on one measure of working memory span (mean n-back span). This study provides additional data showing that cocaine-associated neurocognitive impairment, specifically working memory deficits, can be remediated, at least to some degree. Copyright © 2013. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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The nature of working memory for Braille.
Cohen, Henri; Voss, Patrice; Lepore, Franco; Scherzer, Peter
2010-05-26
Blind individuals have been shown on multiple occasions to compensate for their loss of sight by developing exceptional abilities in their remaining senses. While most research has been focused on perceptual abilities per se in the auditory and tactile modalities, recent work has also investigated higher-order processes involving memory and language functions. Here we examined tactile working memory for Braille in two groups of visually challenged individuals (completely blind subjects, CBS; blind with residual vision, BRV). In a first experimental procedure both groups were given a Braille tactile memory span task with and without articulatory suppression, while the BRV and a sighted group performed a visual version of the task. It was shown that the Braille tactile working memory (BrWM) of CBS individuals under articulatory suppression is as efficient as that of sighted individuals' visual working memory in the same condition. Moreover, the results suggest that BrWM may be more robust in the CBS than in the BRV subjects, thus pointing to the potential role of visual experience in shaping tactile working memory. A second experiment designed to assess the nature (spatial vs. verbal) of this working memory was then carried out with two new CBS and BRV groups having to perform the Braille task concurrently with a mental arithmetic task or a mental displacement of blocks task. We show that the disruption of memory was greatest when concurrently carrying out the mental displacement of blocks, indicating that the Braille tactile subsystem of working memory is likely spatial in nature in CBS. The results also point to the multimodal nature of working memory and show how experience can shape the development of its subcomponents.
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The Nature of Working Memory for Braille
Cohen, Henri; Voss, Patrice; Lepore, Franco; Scherzer, Peter
2010-01-01
Blind individuals have been shown on multiple occasions to compensate for their loss of sight by developing exceptional abilities in their remaining senses. While most research has been focused on perceptual abilities per se in the auditory and tactile modalities, recent work has also investigated higher-order processes involving memory and language functions. Here we examined tactile working memory for Braille in two groups of visually challenged individuals (completely blind subjects, CBS; blind with residual vision, BRV). In a first experimental procedure both groups were given a Braille tactile memory span task with and without articulatory suppression, while the BRV and a sighted group performed a visual version of the task. It was shown that the Braille tactile working memory (BrWM) of CBS individuals under articulatory suppression is as efficient as that of sighted individuals' visual working memory in the same condition. Moreover, the results suggest that BrWM may be more robust in the CBS than in the BRV subjects, thus pointing to the potential role of visual experience in shaping tactile working memory. A second experiment designed to assess the nature (spatial vs. verbal) of this working memory was then carried out with two new CBS and BRV groups having to perform the Braille task concurrently with a mental arithmetic task or a mental displacement of blocks task. We show that the disruption of memory was greatest when concurrently carrying out the mental displacement of blocks, indicating that the Braille tactile subsystem of working memory is likely spatial in nature in CBS. The results also point to the multimodal nature of working memory and show how experience can shape the development of its subcomponents. PMID:20520807
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Familiarity Enhances Visual Working Memory for Faces
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jackson, Margaret C.; Raymond, Jane E.
2008-01-01
Although it is intuitive that familiarity with complex visual objects should aid their preservation in visual working memory (WM), empirical evidence for this is lacking. This study used a conventional change-detection procedure to assess visual WM for unfamiliar and famous faces in healthy adults. Across experiments, faces were upright or…
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Phonological Storage and Executive Function Deficits in Children with Mathematics Difficulties
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Peng, Peng; Congying, Sun; Beilei, Li; Sha, Tao
2012-01-01
Children with mathematics difficulties suffer from working memory deficits. This study investigated the deficit profile of phonological storage and executive functions in working memory among children with mathematics difficulties. Based on multiple instruments and two assessment points, 68 children were screened out of 805 fifth graders. Of these…
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Working memory capacity in generalized social phobia.
Amir, Nader; Bomyea, Jessica
2011-05-01
Research suggests that understanding complex social cues depends on the availability of cognitive resources (e.g., Phillips, Channon, Tunstall, Hedenstrom, & Lyons, 2008). In spite of evidence suggesting that executive control functioning may impact anxiety (e.g., Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), relatively few studies have examined working memory in individuals with generalized social phobia. Moreover, few studies have examined the role of threat-relevant content in working memory performance in clinically anxious populations. To this end, the present study assessed working memory capacity (WMC) in individuals with generalized social phobia and nonanxious controls using an operation span task with threat-relevant and neutral stimuli. Results revealed that nonanxious individuals demonstrated better WMC than individuals with generalized social phobia for neutral words but not for social threat words. Individuals with generalized social phobia demonstrated better WMC performance for threat words relative to neutral words. These results suggest that individuals with generalized social phobia may have relatively enhanced working memory performance for salient, socially relevant information. This enhanced working memory capacity for threat-relevant information may be the result of practice with this information in generalized social phobia.
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The composite complex span: French validation of a short working memory task.
Gonthier, Corentin; Thomassin, Noémylle; Roulin, Jean-Luc
2016-03-01
Most studies in individual differences in the field of working memory research use complex span tasks to measure working memory capacity. Various complex span tasks based on different materials have been developed, and these tasks have proven both reliable and valid; several complex span tasks are often combined to provide a domain-general estimate of working memory capacity with even better psychometric properties. The present work sought to address two issues. Firstly, having participants perform several full-length complex span tasks in succession makes for a long and tedious procedure. Secondly, few complex span tasks have been translated and validated in French. We constructed a French working memory task labeled the Composite Complex Span (CCS). The CCS includes shortened versions of three classic complex span tasks: the reading span, symmetry span, and operation span. We assessed the psychometric properties of the CCS, including test-retest reliability and convergent validity, with Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and with an alpha span task; the CCS demonstrated satisfying qualities in a sample of 1,093 participants. This work provides evidence that shorter versions of classic complex span tasks can yield valid working memory estimates. The materials and normative data for the CCS are also included.
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Jarros, Rafaela Behs; Salum, Giovanni Abrahão; Silva, Cristiano Tschiedel Belem da; Toazza, Rudineia; Becker, Natália; Agranonik, Marilyn; Salles, Jerusa Fumagalli de; Manfro, Gisele Gus
2017-01-01
The aim of the present study was to assess children and adolescents with mild and severe anxiety disorders for their performance in attention, verbal episodic memory, working memory, visuoconstructive skills, executive functions, and cognitive global functioning and conduct comparative analyses with the performance of children free from anxiety disorders. Our sample comprised 68 children and adolescents aged 10 to 17 years (41 with current diagnoses of anxiety disorders and 27 controls) selected from a larger cross-sectional community sample of adolescents. Children and adolescents with anxiety disorders were categorized into two groups on the basis of anxiety severity (mild or severe). All participants underwent a neuropsychological assessment battery to evaluate attention, verbal episodic memory, working memory, visuoconstructive skills, and executive and cognitive functions. No differences were found in any neuropsychological tests, with the single exception that the group with mild anxiety had better performance on the Digit Span backward test compared to subjects with severe anxiety and to controls (p = 0.041; η2 = 0.11). Not only might anxiety disorders spare main cognitive functions during adolescence, they may even enhance certain working memory processes.
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Frizelle, Pauline; Harte, Jennifer; O'Sullivan, Kathleen; Fletcher, Paul; Gibbon, Fiona
2017-01-01
The receptive language measure information-carrying word (ICW) level, is used extensively by speech and language therapists in the UK and Ireland. Despite this it has never been validated via its relationship to any other relevant measures. This study aims to validate the ICW measure by investigating the relationship between the receptive ICW score of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their performance on standardized memory and language assessments. Twenty-seven children with SLI, aged between 5;07 and 8;11, completed a sentence comprehension task in which the instructions gradually increased in number of ICWs. The children also completed subtests from The Working Memory Test Battery for children and The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals- 4. Results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between both language and memory measures and children's ICW score. While both receptive and expressive language were significant in their contribution to children's ICW score, the contribution of memory was solely determined by children's working memory ability. ICW score is in fact a valid measure of the language ability of children with SLI. However therapists should also be cognisant of its strong association with working memory when using this construct in assessment or intervention methods.
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Stretton, Jason; Sidhu, Meneka K.; Winston, Gavin P.; Bartlett, Philippa; McEvoy, Andrew W.; Symms, Mark R.; Koepp, Matthias J.; Thompson, Pamela J.
2014-01-01
Working memory is a crucial cognitive function that is disrupted in temporal lobe epilepsy. It is unclear whether this impairment is a consequence of temporal lobe involvement in working memory processes or due to seizure spread to extratemporal eloquent cortex. Anterior temporal lobe resection controls seizures in 50–80% of patients with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy and the effect of surgery on working memory are poorly understood both at a behavioural and neural level. We investigated the impact of temporal lobe resection on the efficiency and functional anatomy of working memory networks. We studied 33 patients with unilateral medial temporal lobe epilepsy (16 left) before, 3 and 12 months after anterior temporal lobe resection. Fifteen healthy control subjects were also assessed in parallel. All subjects had neuropsychological testing and performed a visuospatial working memory functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm on these three separate occasions. Changes in activation and deactivation patterns were modelled individually and compared between groups. Changes in task performance were included as regressors of interest to assess the efficiency of changes in the networks. Left and right temporal lobe epilepsy patients were impaired on preoperative measures of working memory compared to controls. Working memory performance did not decline following left or right temporal lobe resection, but improved at 3 and 12 months following left and, to a lesser extent, following right anterior temporal lobe resection. After left anterior temporal lobe resection, improved performance correlated with greater deactivation of the left hippocampal remnant and the contralateral right hippocampus. There was a failure of increased deactivation of the left hippocampal remnant at 3 months after left temporal lobe resection compared to control subjects, which had normalized 12 months after surgery. Following right anterior temporal lobe resection there was a progressive increase of activation in the right superior parietal lobe at 3 and 12 months after surgery. There was greater deactivation of the right hippocampal remnant compared to controls between 3 and 12 months after right anterior temporal lobe resection that was associated with lesser improvement in task performance. Working memory improved after anterior temporal lobe resection, particularly following left-sided resections. Postoperative working memory was reliant on the functional capacity of the hippocampal remnant and, following left resections, the functional reserve of the right hippocampus. These data suggest that working memory following temporal lobe resection is dependent on the engagement of the posterior medial temporal lobes and eloquent cortex. PMID:24691395
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Abnormal Neural Network of Primary Insomnia: Evidence from Spatial Working Memory Task fMRI.
Li, Yongli; Liu, Liya; Wang, Enfeng; Zhang, Hongju; Dou, Shewei; Tong, Li; Cheng, Jingliang; Chen, Chuanliang; Shi, Dapeng
2016-01-01
Contemporary functional MRI (fMRI) methods can provide a wealth of information about the neural mechanisms associated with primary insomnia (PI), which centrally involve neural network circuits related to spatial working memory. A total of 30 participants diagnosed with PI and without atypical brain anatomy were selected along with 30 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Subjects were administered the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and clinical assessments of spatial working memory, followed by an MRI scan and fMRI in spatial memory task state. Statistically significant differences between PSQI and spatial working memory were observed between PI patients and controls (p < 0.01). Activation of neural networks related to spatial memory task state in the PI group was observed at the left temporal lobe, left occipital lobe and right frontal lobe. Lower levels of activation were observed in the left parahippocampal gyrus, right parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral temporal cortex, frontal cortex and superior parietal lobule. Participants with PI exhibited characteristic abnormalities in the neural network connectivity related to spatial working memory. These results may be indicative of an underlying pathological mechanism related to spatial working memory deterioration in PI, analogous to recently described mechanisms in other mental health disorders. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.
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Simon, Corey B; Lentz, Trevor A; Bishop, Mark D; Riley, Joseph L; Fillingim, Roger B; George, Steven Z
2016-07-01
Because of its high global burden, determining biopsychosocial influences of chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a research priority. Psychological factors such as pain catastrophizing are well established. However, cognitive factors such as working memory warrant further investigation to be clinically useful. The purpose of this study was to determine how working memory and pain catastrophizing are associated with CLBP measures of daily pain intensity and movement-evoked pain intensity. This study was a cross-sectional analysis of individuals with ≥3 months of CLBP (n=60) compared with pain-free controls (n=30). Participants completed measures of working memory, pain catastrophizing, and daily pain intensity. Movement-evoked pain intensity was assessed using the Back Performance Scale. Outcome measures were compared between individuals with CLBP and those who were pain-free using nonparametric testing. Associations were determined using multivariate regression analyses. Participants with CLBP (mean age=47.7 years, 68% female) had lower working memory performance (P=.008) and higher pain catastrophizing (P<.001) compared with pain-free controls (mean age=47.6 years, 63% female). For individuals with CLBP, only working memory remained associated with daily pain intensity (R(2)=.07, standardized beta=-.308, P=.041) and movement-evoked pain intensity (R(2)=.14, standardized beta=-.502, P=.001) after accounting for age, sex, education, and interactions between pain catastrophizing and working memory. The cross-sectional design prevented prospective analysis. Findings also are not indicative of overall working memory (eg, spatial) or cognitive performance. Working memory demonstrated the strongest association with daily pain and movement-evoked pain intensity compared with (and after accounting for) established CLBP factors. Future research will elucidate the prognostic value of working memory on prevention and recovery of CLBP. © 2016 American Physical Therapy Association.
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Lentz, Trevor A.; Bishop, Mark D.; Riley, Joseph L.; Fillingim, Roger B.; George, Steven Z.
2016-01-01
Background Because of its high global burden, determining biopsychosocial influences of chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a research priority. Psychological factors such as pain catastrophizing are well established. However, cognitive factors such as working memory warrant further investigation to be clinically useful. Objective The purpose of this study was to determine how working memory and pain catastrophizing are associated with CLBP measures of daily pain intensity and movement-evoked pain intensity. Design This study was a cross-sectional analysis of individuals with ≥3 months of CLBP (n=60) compared with pain-free controls (n=30). Method Participants completed measures of working memory, pain catastrophizing, and daily pain intensity. Movement-evoked pain intensity was assessed using the Back Performance Scale. Outcome measures were compared between individuals with CLBP and those who were pain-free using nonparametric testing. Associations were determined using multivariate regression analyses. Results Participants with CLBP (mean age=47.7 years, 68% female) had lower working memory performance (P=.008) and higher pain catastrophizing (P<.001) compared with pain-free controls (mean age=47.6 years, 63% female). For individuals with CLBP, only working memory remained associated with daily pain intensity (R2=.07, standardized beta=−.308, P=.041) and movement-evoked pain intensity (R2=.14, standardized beta=−.502, P=.001) after accounting for age, sex, education, and interactions between pain catastrophizing and working memory. Limitations The cross-sectional design prevented prospective analysis. Findings also are not indicative of overall working memory (eg, spatial) or cognitive performance. Conclusion Working memory demonstrated the strongest association with daily pain and movement-evoked pain intensity compared with (and after accounting for) established CLBP factors. Future research will elucidate the prognostic value of working memory on prevention and recovery of CLBP. PMID:26700272
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Mélan, Claudine; Cascino, Nadine
2014-01-01
The present contribution presents two field studies combining tools and methods from cognitive psychology and from occupational psychology in order to perform a thorough investigation of workload in employees. Cognitive load theory proposes to distinguish different load categories of working memory, in a context of instruction. Intrinsic load is inherent to the task, extraneous load refers to components of a learning environment that may be modified to reduce total load, and germane load enables schemas construction and thus efficient learning. We showed previously that this theoretical framework may be successfully extended to working memory tasks in non-instructional designs. Other theoretical models, issued from the field of occupational psychology, account for an individual’s perception of work demands or requirements in the context of different psychosocial features of the (work) environment. Combining these approaches is difficult as workload assessment by job-perception questionnaires explore an individual’s overall job-perception over a large time-period, whereas cognitive load investigations in working memory tasks are typically performed within short time-periods. We proposed an original methodology enabling investigation of workload and load factors in a comparable time-frame. We report two field studies investigating workload on different shift-phases and between work-shifts, with two custom-made tools. The first one enabled workload assessment by manipulating intrinsic load (task difficulty) and extraneous load (time pressure) in a working-memory task. The second tool was a questionnaire based on the theoretical concepts of work-demands, control, and psychosocial support. Two additional dimensions suspected to contribute to job-perception, i.e., work–family conflicts and availability of human and technical resources were also explored. Results of workload assessments were discussed in light of operators’ alertness and job-performance. PMID:25232346
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Mette, Christian; Grabemann, Marco; Zimmermann, Marco; Strunz, Laura; Scherbaum, Norbert; Wiltfang, Jens; Kis, Bernhard
2015-01-01
Objective Altered time reproduction is exhibited by patients with adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It remains unclear whether memory capacity influences the ability of adults with ADHD to reproduce time intervals. Method We conducted a behavioral study on 30 ADHD patients who were medicated with methylphenidate, 29 unmedicated adult ADHD patients and 32 healthy controls (HCs). We assessed time reproduction using six time intervals (1 s, 4 s, 6 s, 10 s, 24 s and 60 s) and assessed memory performance using the Wechsler memory scale. Results The patients with ADHD exhibited lower memory performance scores than the HCs. No significant differences in the raw scores for any of the time intervals (p > .05), with the exception of the variability at the short time intervals (1 s, 4 s and 6 s) (p < .01), were found between the groups. The overall analyses failed to reveal any significant correlations between time reproduction at any of the time intervals examined in the time reproduction task and working memory performance (p > .05). Conclusion We detected no findings indicating that working memory might influence time reproduction in adult patients with ADHD. Therefore, further studies concerning time reproduction and memory capacity among adult patients with ADHD must be performed to verify and replicate the present findings. PMID:26221955
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Online assessment of risk factors for dementia and cognitive function in healthy adults.
Huntley, J; Corbett, A; Wesnes, K; Brooker, H; Stenton, R; Hampshire, A; Ballard, C
2018-02-01
Several potentially modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia have been identified, including low educational attainment, smoking, diabetes, physical inactivity, hypertension, midlife obesity, depression, and perceived social isolation. Managing these risk factors in late midlife and older age may help reduce the risk of dementia; however, it is unclear whether these factors also relate to cognitive performance in older individuals without dementia. Data from 14 201 non-demented individuals aged >50 years who enrolled in the online PROTECT study were used to examine the relationship between cognitive function and known modifiable risk factors for dementia. Multivariate regression analyses were conducted on 4 cognitive outcomes assessing verbal and spatial working memory, visual episodic memory, and verbal reasoning. Increasing age was associated with reduced performance across all tasks. Higher educational achievement, the presence of a close confiding relationship, and moderate alcohol intake were associated with benefits across all 4 cognitive tasks, and exercise was associated with better performance on verbal reasoning and verbal working memory tasks. A diagnosis of depression was negatively associated with performance on visual episodic memory and working memory tasks, whereas being underweight negatively affected performance on all tasks apart from verbal working memory. A history of stroke was negatively associated with verbal reasoning and working memory performance. Known modifiable risk factors for dementia are associated with cognitive performance in non-demented individuals in late midlife and older age. This provides further support for public health interventions that seek to manage these risk factors across the lifespan. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Hoffman, A N; Krigbaum, A; Ortiz, J B; Mika, A; Hutchinson, K M; Bimonte-Nelson, H A; Conrad, C D
2011-09-01
Chronic stress results in reversible spatial learning impairments in the Morris water maze that correspond with hippocampal CA3 dendritic retraction in male rats. Whether chronic stress impacts different types of memory domains, and whether these can similarly recover, is unknown. This study assessed the effects of chronic stress with and without a post-stress delay to evaluate learning and memory deficits within two memory domains, reference and working memory, in the radial arm water maze (RAWM). Three groups of 5-month-old male Sprague-Dawley rats were either not stressed [control (CON)], or restrained (6 h/day for 21 days) and then tested on the RAWM either on the next day [stress immediate (STR-IMM)] or following a 21-day delay [stress delay (STR-DEL)]. Although the groups learned the RAWM task similarly, groups differed in their 24-h retention trial assessment. Specifically, the STR-IMM group made more errors within both the spatial reference and working memory domains, and these deficits corresponded with a reduction in apical branch points and length of hippocampal CA3 dendrites. In contrast, the STR-DEL group showed significantly fewer errors in both the reference and working memory domains than the STR-IMM group. Moreover, the STR-DEL group showed better RAWM performance in the reference memory domain than did the CON group, and this corresponded with restored CA3 dendritic complexity, revealing long-term enhancing actions of chronic stress. These results indicate that chronic stress-induced spatial working and reference memory impairments, and CA3 dendritic retraction, are reversible, with chronic stress having lasting effects that can benefit spatial reference memory, but with these lasting beneficial effects being independent of CA3 dendritic complexity. © 2011 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience © 2011 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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Structural correlates of impaired working memory in hippocampal sclerosis.
Winston, Gavin P; Stretton, Jason; Sidhu, Meneka K; Symms, Mark R; Thompson, Pamela J; Duncan, John S
2013-07-01
Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) has been considered to impair long-term memory, whilst not affecting working memory, but recent evidence suggests that working memory is compromised. Functional MRI (fMRI) studies demonstrate that working memory involves a bilateral frontoparietal network the activation of which is disrupted in hippocampal sclerosis (HS). A specific role of the hippocampus to deactivate during working memory has been proposed with this mechanism faulty in patients with HS. Structural correlates of disrupted working memory in HS have not been explored. We studied 54 individuals with medically refractory TLE and unilateral HS (29 left) and 28 healthy controls. Subjects underwent 3T structural MRI, a visuospatial n-back fMRI paradigm and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Working memory capacity assessed by three span tasks (digit span backwards, gesture span, motor sequences) was combined with performance in the visuospatial paradigm to give a global working memory measure. Gray and white matter changes were investigated using voxel-based morphometry and voxel-based analysis of DTI, respectively. Individuals with left or right HS performed less well than healthy controls on all measures of working memory. fMRI demonstrated a bilateral frontoparietal network during the working memory task with reduced activation of the right parietal lobe in both patient groups. In left HS, gray matter loss was seen in the ipsilateral hippocampus and parietal lobe, with maintenance of the gray matter volume of the contralateral parietal lobe associated with better performance. White matter integrity within the frontoparietal network, in particular the superior longitudinal fasciculus and cingulum, and the contralateral temporal lobe, was associated with working memory performance. In right HS, gray matter loss was also seen in the ipsilateral hippocampus and parietal lobe. Working memory performance correlated with the gray matter volume of both frontal lobes and white matter integrity within the frontoparietal network and contralateral temporal lobe. Our data provide further evidence that working memory is disrupted in HS and impaired integrity of both gray and white matter is seen in functionally relevant areas. We suggest this forms the structural basis of the impairment of working memory, indicating widespread and functionally significant structural changes in patients with apparently isolated HS. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2013 International League Against Epilepsy.
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Structural correlates of impaired working memory in hippocampal sclerosis
Winston, Gavin P; Stretton, Jason; Sidhu, Meneka K; Symms, Mark R; Thompson, Pamela J; Duncan, John S
2013-01-01
Purpose: Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) has been considered to impair long-term memory, whilst not affecting working memory, but recent evidence suggests that working memory is compromised. Functional MRI (fMRI) studies demonstrate that working memory involves a bilateral frontoparietal network the activation of which is disrupted in hippocampal sclerosis (HS). A specific role of the hippocampus to deactivate during working memory has been proposed with this mechanism faulty in patients with HS. Structural correlates of disrupted working memory in HS have not been explored. Methods: We studied 54 individuals with medically refractory TLE and unilateral HS (29 left) and 28 healthy controls. Subjects underwent 3T structural MRI, a visuospatial n-back fMRI paradigm and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Working memory capacity assessed by three span tasks (digit span backwards, gesture span, motor sequences) was combined with performance in the visuospatial paradigm to give a global working memory measure. Gray and white matter changes were investigated using voxel-based morphometry and voxel-based analysis of DTI, respectively. Key Findings: Individuals with left or right HS performed less well than healthy controls on all measures of working memory. fMRI demonstrated a bilateral frontoparietal network during the working memory task with reduced activation of the right parietal lobe in both patient groups. In left HS, gray matter loss was seen in the ipsilateral hippocampus and parietal lobe, with maintenance of the gray matter volume of the contralateral parietal lobe associated with better performance. White matter integrity within the frontoparietal network, in particular the superior longitudinal fasciculus and cingulum, and the contralateral temporal lobe, was associated with working memory performance. In right HS, gray matter loss was also seen in the ipsilateral hippocampus and parietal lobe. Working memory performance correlated with the gray matter volume of both frontal lobes and white matter integrity within the frontoparietal network and contralateral temporal lobe. Significance: Our data provide further evidence that working memory is disrupted in HS and impaired integrity of both gray and white matter is seen in functionally relevant areas. We suggest this forms the structural basis of the impairment of working memory, indicating widespread and functionally significant structural changes in patients with apparently isolated HS. PMID:23614459
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Effects of working memory training on children born preterm.
Lee, Clara S C; Pei, Jacqueline; Andrew, Gail; A Kerns, Kimberly; Rasmussen, Carmen
2017-01-01
Researchers have reported benefits of working memory training in various populations, however, the training gains in preterm population is still inadequately studied. This study aimed to investigate the transfer and lasting effects of an online working memory training program on a group of preterm children aged between 4 and 6 years (mean gestational age = 28.3 weeks; mean birth weight = 1153 grams). Children were asked to perform the Cogmed JM at home for approximately 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Their nontrained working memory and attention were assessed pre-training, post-training, and at 5-week follow-up. Parent ratings on children's executive functions were obtained at the three time points. Results revealed that significant improvements in verbal working memory was emerging in preterm children at 5-week follow-up, while significant gains in visuospatial working memory was found post-training and at 5-week follow-up in age-matched term-born children. These results indicated that working memory training has benefits on preterm children; however, the gains are different from those observed in term-born children. No significant differences in attention and parent-rated EF were found in either group across time. The possible explanations for the training benefits observed in preterm children were discussed.
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Liu, Pei; Zhao, Fengqing; Zhang, Baoshan; Dang, Qingxiu
2017-10-03
Assuming that the principle of an active-self account holds true in real life, priming certain constructs could selectively activate a working self-concept, which in turn guides behavior. The current study involved two experiments that examined the relationships between stereotypic identity, working self-concept, and memory performance in older adults. Specifically, Study 1 tested whether a stereotype threat can affect older adults' working self-concept and memory performance. A modified Stroop color naming task and a separate recognition task showed that a stereotype threat prime altered the activation of the working self-concept and deteriorated the older adults' memory performance. Additionally, the working self-concept mediated the effect of stereotype threat on memory performance. Accordingly, we designed Study 2 to assess whether priming different identities can alter the working self-concept of the elderly and buffer the stereotype threat effect on memory performance. The results not only were the same as Study 1 but also revealed that activating multiple identities could mitigate the stereotype threat. These results support an active-self account and the efficacy of stereotype threat intervention. This intervention strategy may be able to be used in real situations to help the elderly alleviate stereotype threats and memory impairment.
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Knoop-van Campen, Carolien A N; Segers, Eliane; Verhoeven, Ludo
2018-05-01
This study examined the relation between working memory, phonological awareness, and word reading efficiency in fourth-grade children with dyslexia. To test whether the relation between phonological awareness and word reading efficiency differed for children with dyslexia versus typically developing children, we assessed phonological awareness and word reading efficiency in 50 children with dyslexia (aged 9;10, 35 boys) and 613 typically developing children (aged 9;5, 279 boys). Phonological awareness was found to be associated with word reading efficiency, similar for children with dyslexia and typically developing children. To find out whether the relation between working memory and word reading efficiency in the group with dyslexia could be explained by phonological awareness, the children with dyslexia were also tested on working memory. Results of a mediation analysis showed a significant indirect effect of working memory on word reading efficiency via phonological awareness. Working memory predicted reading efficiency, via its relation with phonological awareness in children with dyslexia. This indicates that working memory is necessary for word reading efficiency via its impact on phonological awareness and that phonological awareness continues to be important for word reading efficiency in older children with dyslexia. © 2018 The Authors Dyslexia Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Working memory training promotes general cognitive abilities in genetically heterogeneous mice.
Light, Kenneth R; Kolata, Stefan; Wass, Christopher; Denman-Brice, Alexander; Zagalsky, Ryan; Matzel, Louis D
2010-04-27
In both humans and mice, the efficacy of working memory capacity and its related process, selective attention, are each strongly predictive of individuals' aggregate performance in cognitive test batteries [1-9]. Because working memory is taxed during most cognitive tasks, the efficacy of working memory may have a causal influence on individuals' performance on tests of "intelligence" [10, 11]. Despite the attention this has received, supporting evidence has been largely correlational in nature (but see [12]). Here, genetically heterogeneous mice were assessed on a battery of five learning tasks. Animals' aggregate performance across the tasks was used to estimate their general cognitive abilities, a trait that is in some respects analogous to intelligence [13, 14]. Working memory training promoted an increase in animals' selective attention and their aggregate performance on these tasks. This enhancement of general cognitive performance by working memory training was attenuated if its selective attention demands were reduced. These results provide evidence that the efficacy of working memory capacity and selective attention may be causally related to an animal's general cognitive performance and provide a framework for behavioral strategies to promote those abilities. Furthermore, the pattern of behavior reported here reflects a conservation of the processes that regulate general cognitive performance in humans and infrahuman animals. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Lew, Sergio E; Tseng, Kuei Y
2014-12-01
Dopamine modulation of GABAergic transmission in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is thought to be critical for sustaining cognitive processes such as working memory and decision-making. Here, we developed a neurocomputational model of the PFC that includes physiological features of the facilitatory action of dopamine on fast-spiking interneurons to assess how a GABAergic dysregulation impacts on the prefrontal network stability and working memory. We found that a particular non-linear relationship between dopamine transmission and GABA function is required to enable input selectivity in the PFC for the formation and retention of working memory. Either degradation of the dopamine signal or the GABAergic function is sufficient to elicit hyperexcitability in pyramidal neurons and working memory impairments. The simulations also revealed an inverted U-shape relationship between working memory and dopamine, a function that is maintained even at high levels of GABA degradation. In fact, the working memory deficits resulting from reduced GABAergic transmission can be rescued by increasing dopamine tone and vice versa. We also examined the role of this dopamine-GABA interaction for the termination of working memory and found that the extent of GABAergic excitation needed to reset the PFC network begins to occur when the activity of fast-spiking interneurons surpasses 40 Hz. Together, these results indicate that the capability of the PFC to sustain working memory and network stability depends on a robust interplay of compensatory mechanisms between dopamine tone and the activity of local GABAergic interneurons.
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Visual working memory capacity and the medial temporal lobe.
Jeneson, Annette; Wixted, John T; Hopkins, Ramona O; Squire, Larry R
2012-03-07
Patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage are sometimes impaired at remembering visual information across delays as short as a few seconds. Such impairments could reflect either impaired visual working memory capacity or impaired long-term memory (because attention has been diverted or because working memory capacity has been exceeded). Using a standard change-detection task, we asked whether visual working memory capacity is intact or impaired after MTL damage. Five patients with hippocampal lesions and one patient with large MTL lesions saw an array of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 colored squares, followed after 3, 4, or 8 s by a second array where one of the colored squares was cued. The task was to decide whether the cued square had the same color as the corresponding square in the first array or a different color. At the 1 s delay typically used to assess working memory capacity, patients performed as well as controls at all array sizes. At the longer delays, patients performed as well as controls at small array sizes, thought to be within the capacity limit, and worse than controls at large array sizes, thought to exceed the capacity limit. The findings suggest that visual working memory capacity in humans is intact after damage to the MTL structures and that damage to these structures impairs performance only when visual working memory is insufficient to support performance.
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Moran, Erin K.; Culbreth, Adam J.; Barch, Deanna M.
2017-01-01
Negative symptoms are a core clinical feature of schizophrenia, but conceptual and methodological problems with current instruments can make their assessment challenging. One hypothesis is that current symptom assessments may be influenced by impairments in memory and may not be fully reflective of actual functioning outside of the laboratory. The present study sought to investigate the validity of assessing negative symptoms using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants with schizophrenia (N=31) completed electronic questionnaires on smartphones four times a day for one week. Participants also completed Effort-Based Decision Making and Reinforcement Learning (RL) tasks to assess the relationship between EMA and laboratory measures, which tap into negative symptom relevant domains. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed that clinician-rated and self-report measures of negative symptoms were significantly related to negative symptoms assessed via EMA. However, working memory moderated the relationship between EMA and retrospective measures of negative symptoms, such that there was a stronger relationship between EMA and retrospective negative symptom measures among individuals with better working memory. We also found that negative symptoms assessed via EMA were related to poor performance on the Effort task, while clinician-rated symptoms and self-reports were not. Further, we found that negative symptoms were related to poorer performance on learning reward contingencies. Our findings suggest that negative symptoms can be assessed through EMA and that working memory impairments frequently seen in schizophrenia may affect recall of symptoms. Moreover, these findings suggest the importance of examining the relationship between laboratory tasks and symptoms assessed during daily life. PMID:27893230
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McAuley, Tara; White, Desirée
2010-01-01
The present study addressed three related aims: (1) to replicate and extend previous work regarding the non-unitary nature of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory during development, (2) to quantify the rate at which processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory develop and the extent to which the development of these latter abilities reflect general changes in processing speed, and (3) to evaluate whether commonly used tasks of processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory are valid and reliable when used with a developmentally diverse group. To address these aims, a latent variables approach was used to analyze data from 147 participants 6 to 24 years of age. Results showed that processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory were separable abilities and that the extent of this separability was stable cross the age range of participants. All three constructs improved as a function of age; however, only the effect of age on working memory remained significant after processing speed was controlled. The psychometric properties of tasks used to assess the constructs were age invariant, thus validating their use in studies of executive development. PMID:20888572
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Working memory deficits in adults with ADHD: is there evidence for subtype differences?
Schweitzer, Julie B; Hanford, Russell B; Medoff, Deborah R
2006-01-01
Background Working memory performance is important for maintaining functioning in cognitive, academic and social activities. Previous research suggests there are prevalent working memory deficits in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There is now a growing body of literature characterizing working memory functioning according to ADHD subtypes in children. The expression of working memory deficits in adults with ADHD and how they vary according to subtype, however, remains to be more fully documented. Methods This study assessed differences in working memory functioning between Normal Control (NC) adults (N = 18); patients with ADHD, Combined (ADHD-CT) Type ADHD (N = 17); and ADHD, Inattentive (ADHD-IA) Type (N = 16) using subtests from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III and Wechsler Memory Scale-III and the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT). Results The ADHD groups displayed significant weaknesses in contrast to the NC group on working memory tests requiring rapid processing and active stimulus manipulation. This included the Letter-Number-Sequencing test of the Wechsler scales, PASAT omission errors and the longest sequence of consecutive correct answers on the PASAT. No overall ADHD group subtype differences emerged; however differences between the ADHD groups and the NC group varied depending on the measure and the gender of the participants. Gender differences in performance were evident on some measures of working memory, regardless of group, with males performing better than females. Conclusion In general, the data support a dimensional interpretation of working memory deficits experienced by the ADHD-CT and ADHD-IA subtypes, rather than an absolute difference between subtypes. Future studies should test the effects of processing speed and load on subtype performance and how those variables interact with gender in adults with ADHD. PMID:17173676
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Weber, Heike S.; Lu, Liping; Shi, Jiannong; Spinath, Frank M.
2013-01-01
The present study investigated the roles of cognitive (working memory, intelligence) and motivational variables (self-perceived ability, intrinsic value) in explaining school achievement. The sample consisted of N = 320 German elementary school children in the fourth grade. Working memory and intelligence were assessed in the classroom.…
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Does Working Memory Moderate the Effects of Fraction Intervention? An Aptitude-Treatment Interaction
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fuchs, Lynn S.; Schumacher, Robin F.; Sterba, Sonya K.; Long, Jessica; Namkung, Jessica; Malone, Amelia; Hamlett, Carol L.; Jordan, Nancy C.; Gersten, Russell; Siegler, Robert S.; Changas, Paul
2014-01-01
This study investigated whether individual differences in working memory (WM) moderate effects of 2 variations of intervention designed to improve at-risk 4th graders' fraction knowledge. We also examined the effects of each intervention condition against a business-as-usual control group and assessed whether children's measurement interpretation…
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Working Memory Components as Predictors of Children's Mathematical Word Problem Solving
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zheng, Xinhua; Swanson, H. Lee; Marcoulides, George A.
2011-01-01
This study determined the working memory (WM) components (executive, phonological loop, and visual-spatial sketchpad) that best predicted mathematical word problem-solving accuracy of elementary school children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 (N = 310). A battery of tests was administered to assess problem-solving accuracy, problem-solving processes, WM,…
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Phonological Working Memory for Words and Nonwords in Cerebral Cortex
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Perrachione, Tyler K.; Ghosh, Satrajit S.; Ostrovskaya, Irina; Gabrieli, John D. E.; Kovelman, Ioulia
2017-01-01
Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to identify the brain bases of phonological working memory (the short-term maintenance of speech sounds) using behavioral tasks analogous to clinically sensitive assessments of nonword repetition. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify how individual differences in brain activation were…
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Computer-Based Working Memory Training in Children with Mild Intellectual Disability
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Delavarian, Mona; Bokharaeian, Behrouz; Towhidkhah, Farzad; Gharibzadeh, Shahriar
2015-01-01
We designed a working memory (WM) training programme in game framework for mild intellectually disabled students. Twenty-four students participated as test and control groups. The auditory and visual-spatial WM were assessed by primary test, which included computerised Wechsler numerical forward and backward sub-tests and secondary tests, which…
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Chevalier, Nicolas; James, Tiffany D; Wiebe, Sandra A; Nelson, Jennifer Mize; Espy, Kimberly Andrews
2014-07-01
The present study addressed whether developmental improvement in working memory span task performance relies upon a growing ability to proactively plan response sequences during childhood. Two hundred thirteen children completed a working memory span task in which they used a touchscreen to reproduce orally presented sequences of animal names. Children were assessed longitudinally at 7 time points between 3 and 10 years of age. Twenty-one young adults also completed the same task. Proactive response sequence planning was assessed by comparing recall durations for the 1st item (preparatory interval) and subsequent items. At preschool age, the preparatory interval was generally shorter than subsequent item recall durations, whereas it was systematically longer during elementary school and in adults. Although children mostly approached the task reactively at preschool, they proactively planned response sequences with increasing efficiency from age 7 on, like adults. These findings clarify the nature of the changes in executive control that support working memory performance with age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
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Engel de Abreu, Pascale M J; Abreu, Neander; Nikaedo, Carolina C; Puglisi, Marina L; Tourinho, Carlos J; Miranda, Mônica C; Befi-Lopes, Debora M; Bueno, Orlando F A; Martin, Romain
2014-01-01
This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (private or public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP) and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptual tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled "Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility," "Interference Suppression," "Selective Attention," and "Response Inhibition." Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers. This might have important implications for how educators might intervene with children at risk of academic under achievement.
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Salemink, Elske; Wiers, Reinout W
2014-03-01
Although studies on explicit alcohol cognitions have identified positive and negative reinforcing drinking motives that are differentially related to drinking indices, such a distinction has received less attention in studies on implicit cognitions. An alcohol-related Word-Sentence Association Task was used to assess implicit alcohol-related memory associations in positive and negative affect situations in 92 participants. Results revealed that enhancement motives were specifically associated with the endorsement of alcohol words in positive affect situations and coping motives were associated with the endorsement of alcohol words in negative affect situations. Furthermore, alcohol associations in positive affect situations predicted prospective alcohol use and number of binges, depending on levels of working memory capacity. The current findings shed more light on the underpinnings of alcohol use and suggest that implicit memory processes and working memory capacity might be important targets for intervention.
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Social cognition and prefrontal hemodynamic responses during a working memory task in schizophrenia.
Pu, Shenghong; Nakagome, Kazuyuki; Yamada, Takeshi; Itakura, Masashi; Yamanashi, Takehiko; Yamada, Sayaka; Masai, Mieko; Miura, Akihiko; Yamauchi, Takahira; Satake, Takahiro; Iwata, Masaaki; Nagata, Izumi; Roberts, David L; Kaneko, Koichi
2016-03-01
Social cognition is an important determinant of functional impairment in schizophrenia, but its relationship with the prefrontal functional abnormalities associated with the condition is still unclear. The present study aimed to explore the relationship between social cognition and prefrontal function in patients with schizophrenia using 52-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Twenty-six patients with schizophrenia and 26 age-, gender-, and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls (HCs) participated in the study. Hemodynamic responses in the prefrontal and superior temporal cortical regions were assessed during a working memory task using NIRS. Social cognition was assessed using the Social Cognition Screening Questionnaire (SCSQ). The observed hemodynamic responses were significantly reduced in the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), the frontopolar cortex, and temporal regions in subjects with schizophrenia compared to HCs. Additionally, lateral PFC hemodynamic responses assessed during the working memory task demonstrated a strong positive correlation with the SCSQ theory of mind (ToM) subscale score even after controlling for working memory performance. These results suggest that ToM integrity is closely related to lateral PFC functional abnormalities found in patients with schizophrenia. In addition, this study provides evidence to suggest that NIRS could be used to identify biomarkers of social cognition function in subjects with schizophrenia.
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Simms, Victoria; Gilmore, Camilla; Cragg, Lucy; Clayton, Sarah; Marlow, Neil; Johnson, Samantha
2015-02-01
Children born very preterm (<32 wk) are at high risk for mathematics learning difficulties that are out of proportion to other academic and cognitive deficits. However, the etiology of mathematics difficulties in very preterm children is unknown. We sought to identify the nature and origins of preterm children's mathematics difficulties. One hundred and fifteen very preterm children aged 8-10 y were assessed in school with a control group of 77 term-born classmates. Achievement in mathematics, working memory, visuospatial processing, inhibition, and processing speed were assessed using standardized tests. Numerical representations and specific mathematics skills were assessed using experimental tests. Very preterm children had significantly poorer mathematics achievement, working memory, and visuospatial skills than term-born controls. Although preterm children had poorer performance in specific mathematics skills, there was no evidence of imprecise numerical representations. Difficulties in mathematics were associated with deficits in visuospatial processing and working memory. Mathematics difficulties in very preterm children are associated with deficits in working memory and visuospatial processing not numerical representations. Thus, very preterm children's mathematics difficulties are different in nature from those of children with developmental dyscalculia. Interventions targeting general cognitive problems, rather than numerical representations, may improve very preterm children's mathematics achievement.
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Long-term and within-day variability of working memory performance and EEG in individuals.
Gevins, Alan; McEvoy, Linda K; Smith, Michael E; Chan, Cynthia S; Sam-Vargas, Lita; Baum, Cliff; Ilan, Aaron B
2012-07-01
Assess individual-subject long-term and within-day variability of a combined behavioral and EEG test of working memory. EEGs were recorded from 16 adults performing n-back working memory tasks, with 10 tested in morning and afternoon sessions over several years. Participants were also tested after ingesting non-prescription medications or recreational substances. Performance and EEG measures were analyzed to derive an Overall score and three constituent sub-scores characterizing changes in performance, cortical activation, and alertness from each individual's baseline. Long-term and within-day variability were determined for each score; medication effects were assessed by reference to each individual's normal day-to-day variability. Over the several year period, the mean Overall score and sub-scores were approximately zero with standard deviations less than one. Overall scores were lower and their variability higher in afternoon relative to morning sessions. At the group level, alcohol, diphenhydramine and marijuana produced significant effects, but there were large individual differences. Objective working memory measures incorporating performance and EEG are stable over time and sensitive at the level of individual subjects to interventions that affect neurocognitive function. With further research these measures may be suitable for use in individualized medical care by providing a sensitive assessment of incipient illness and response to treatment. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
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No lower cognitive functioning in older adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Semeijn, E J; Korten, N C M; Comijs, H C; Michielsen, M; Deeg, D J H; Beekman, A T F; Kooij, J J S
2015-09-01
Research illustrates cognitive deficits in children and younger adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Few studies have focused on the cognitive functioning in older adults. This study investigates the association between ADHD and cognitive functioning in older adults. Data were collected in a cross-sectional side study of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA). A diagnostic interview to diagnose ADHD was administered among a subsample (N = 231, age 60-94). ADHD symptoms and diagnosis were assessed with the Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults (DIVA) 2.0. Cognitive functioning was assessed with tests in the domains of executive functioning, information processing speed, memory, and attention/working memory. Regression analyses indicate that ADHD diagnosis and ADHD severity were only negatively associated with cognitive functioning in the attention/working memory domain. When adjusting for depression, these associations were no longer significant. The study shows that ADHD in older adults is associated with lower cognitive functioning in the attention/working memory domain. However, this was partly explained by depressive symptoms.
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The Interplay of Reader Goals, Working Memory, and Text Structure During Reading
Bohn-Gettler, Catherine M.; Kendeou, Panayiota
2014-01-01
In the current study we examined the complex interactions of instructional context, text properties, and reader characteristics during comprehension. College students were tasked with the goal of reading for study versus entertainment (instructional context) while thinking-aloud about four different expository text structures (text properties). Working memory also was assessed (reader characteristics). Reading goals and working memory interacted to influence paraphrasing and non-coherence processes when thinking aloud. Reading goals, working memory, and text structure all interacted to influence text-based inferences. Text structure also influenced knowledge-based inferences. Post-reading recall was highest for those with the instructional goal of reading for study (compared to entertainment), as well as for problem-response and compare-contrast texts (compared to descriptive and chronological texts). Implications of the findings are discussed. PMID:25018581
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The short- and long-term consequences of directed forgetting in a working memory task.
Festini, Sara B; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A
2013-01-01
Directed forgetting requires the voluntary control of memory. Whereas many studies have examined directed forgetting in long-term memory (LTM), the mechanisms and effects of directed forgetting within working memory (WM) are less well understood. The current study tests how directed forgetting instructions delivered in a WM task influence veridical memory, as well as false memory, over the short and long term. In a modified item recognition task Experiment 1 tested WM only and demonstrated that directed forgetting reduces false recognition errors and semantic interference. Experiment 2 replicated these WM effects and used a surprise LTM recognition test to assess the long-term effects of directed forgetting in WM. Long-term veridical memory for to-be-remembered lists was better than memory for to-be-forgotten lists-the directed forgetting effect. Moreover, fewer false memories emerged for to-be-forgotten information than for to-be-remembered information in LTM as well. These results indicate that directed forgetting during WM reduces semantic processing of to-be-forgotten lists over the short and long term. Implications for theories of false memory and the mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory are discussed.
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Rajji, Tarek K; Mulsant, Benoit H; Davies, Simon; Kalache, Sawsan M; Tsoutsoulas, Christopher; Pollock, Bruce G; Remington, Gary
2015-06-01
Clozapine's potent antagonism of muscarinic M1 receptors is thought to worsen working memory deficits associated with schizophrenia. In contrast, its major metabolite, N-desmethylclozapine (NDMC), is thought to enhance working memory via its M1 receptor agonist activity. The authors hypothesized that the ratio of serum clozapine and NDMC concentrations would be inversely associated with working memory performance in schizophrenia. Thirty patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder who were receiving clozapine monotherapy at bedtime completed the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) on the day their blood was collected to assess concentrations of clozapine and NDMC as well as serum anticholinergic activity. The clozapine/NDMC ratio was significantly and negatively associated with working memory performance after controlling for age, gender, education, and symptom severity. No significant associations were found between individual clozapine and NDMC concentrations and working memory performance. Serum anticholinergic activity was significantly associated with clozapine concentration, but not with working memory performance or NDMC concentration. No significant associations were found between any pharmacological measure and performance on other MCCB cognitive domains. This hypothesis-driven study confirms that clozapine/NDMC ratio is a strong predictor of working memory performance in patients with schizophrenia. This finding suggests that manipulating the clozapine/NDMC ratio could enhance cognition in patients with schizophrenia treated with clozapine. It also supports the study of procholinergic agents, such as M1 receptor-positive allosteric modulators, to enhance cognition in schizophrenia.
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Memory rehabilitation for the working memory of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Mousavi, Shokoufeh; Zare, Hossein; Etemadifar, Masoud; Taher Neshatdoost, Hamid
2018-05-01
The main cognitive impairments in multiple sclerosis (MS) affect the working memory, processing speed, and performances that are in close interaction with one another. Cognitive problems in MS are influenced to a lesser degree by disease recovery medications or treatments,but cognitive rehabilitation is considered one of the promising methods for cure. There is evidence regarding the effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation for MS patients in various stages of the disease. Since the impairment in working memory is one of the main MS deficits, a particular training that affects this cognitive domain can be of a great value. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of memory rehabilitation on the working memory performance of MS patients. Sixty MS patients with cognitive impairment and similar in terms of demographic characteristics, duration of disease, neurological problems, and mental health were randomly assigned to three groups: namely, experimental, placebo, and control. Patients' cognitive evaluation incorporated baseline assessments immediately post-intervention and 5 weeks post-intervention. The experimental group received a cognitive rehabilitation program in one-hour sessions on a weekly basis for 8 weeks. The placebo group received relaxation techniques on a weekly basis; the control group received no intervention. The results of this study showed that the cognitive rehabilitation program had a positive effect on the working memory performance of patients with MS in the experimental group. These results were achieved in immediate evaluation (post-test) and follow-up 5 weeks after intervention. There was no significant difference in working memory performance between the placebo group and the control group. According to the study, there is evidence for the effectiveness of a memory rehabilitation program for the working memory of patients with MS. Cognitive rehabilitation can improve working memory disorders and have a positive effect on the working memory performance of these patients.
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Do the effects of working memory training depend on baseline ability level?
Foster, Jeffrey L; Harrison, Tyler L; Hicks, Kenny L; Draheim, Christopher; Redick, Thomas S; Engle, Randall W
2017-11-01
There is a debate about the ability to improve cognitive abilities such as fluid intelligence through training on tasks of working memory capacity. The question addressed in the research presented here is who benefits the most from training: people with low cognitive ability or people with high cognitive ability? Subjects with high and low working memory capacity completed a 23-session study that included 3 assessment sessions, and 20 sessions of training on 1 of 3 training regiments: complex span training, running span training, or an active-control task. Consistent with other research, the authors found that training on 1 executive function did not transfer to ability on a different cognitive ability. High working memory subjects showed the largest gains on the training tasks themselves relative to the low working memory subjects-a finding that suggests high spans benefit more than low spans from training with executive function tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Working memory and language: skill-specific or domain-general relations to mathematics?
Purpura, David J; Ganley, Colleen M
2014-06-01
Children's early mathematics skills develop in a cumulative fashion; foundational skills form a basis for the acquisition of later skills. However, non-mathematical factors such as working memory and language skills have also been linked to mathematical development at a broad level. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted to evaluate the specific relations of these two non-mathematical factors to individual aspects of early mathematics. Thus, the focus of this study was to determine whether working memory and language were related to only individual aspects of early mathematics or related to many components of early mathematics skills. A total of 199 4- to 6-year-old preschool and kindergarten children were assessed on a battery of early mathematics tasks as well as measures of working memory and language. Results indicated that working memory has a specific relation to only a few-but critically important-early mathematics skills and language has a broad relation to nearly all early mathematics skills. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Spatial working memory in heavy cannabis users: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Kanayama, Gen; Rogowska, Jadwiga; Pope, Harrison G; Gruber, Staci A; Yurgelun-Todd, Deborah A
2004-11-01
Many neuropsychological studies have documented deficits in working memory among recent heavy cannabis users. However, little is known about the effects of cannabis on brain activity. We assessed brain function among recent heavy cannabis users while they performed a working memory task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine brain activity in 12 long-term heavy cannabis users, 6-36 h after last use, and in 10 control subjects while they performed a spatial working memory task. Regional brain activation was analyzed and compared using statistical parametric mapping techniques. Compared with controls, cannabis users exhibited increased activation of brain regions typically used for spatial working memory tasks (such as prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate). Users also recruited additional regions not typically used for spatial working memory (such as regions in the basal ganglia). These findings remained essentially unchanged when re-analyzed using subjects' ages as a covariate. Brain activation showed little or no significant correlation with subjects' years of education, verbal IQ, lifetime episodes of cannabis use, or urinary cannabinoid levels at the time of scanning. Recent cannabis users displayed greater and more widespread brain activation than normal subjects when attempting to perform a spatial working memory task. This observation suggests that recent cannabis users may experience subtle neurophysiological deficits, and that they compensate for these deficits by "working harder"-calling upon additional brain regions to meet the demands of the task.
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Gordon-Salant, Sandra; Cole, Stacey Samuels
2016-01-01
This study aimed to determine if younger and older listeners with normal hearing who differ on working memory span perform differently on speech recognition tests in noise. Older adults typically exhibit poorer speech recognition scores in noise than younger adults, which is attributed primarily to poorer hearing sensitivity and more limited working memory capacity in older than younger adults. Previous studies typically tested older listeners with poorer hearing sensitivity and shorter working memory spans than younger listeners, making it difficult to discern the importance of working memory capacity on speech recognition. This investigation controlled for hearing sensitivity and compared speech recognition performance in noise by younger and older listeners who were subdivided into high and low working memory groups. Performance patterns were compared for different speech materials to assess whether or not the effect of working memory capacity varies with the demands of the specific speech test. The authors hypothesized that (1) normal-hearing listeners with low working memory span would exhibit poorer speech recognition performance in noise than those with high working memory span; (2) older listeners with normal hearing would show poorer speech recognition scores than younger listeners with normal hearing, when the two age groups were matched for working memory span; and (3) an interaction between age and working memory would be observed for speech materials that provide contextual cues. Twenty-eight older (61 to 75 years) and 25 younger (18 to 25 years) normal-hearing listeners were assigned to groups based on age and working memory status. Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 words and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers sentences were presented in noise using an adaptive procedure to measure the signal-to-noise ratio corresponding to 50% correct performance. Cognitive ability was evaluated with two tests of working memory (Listening Span Test and Reading Span Test) and two tests of processing speed (Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test and The Letter Digit Substitution Test). Significant effects of age and working memory capacity were observed on the speech recognition measures in noise, but these effects were mediated somewhat by the speech signal. Specifically, main effects of age and working memory were revealed for both words and sentences, but the interaction between the two was significant for sentences only. For these materials, effects of age were observed for listeners in the low working memory groups only. Although all cognitive measures were significantly correlated with speech recognition in noise, working memory span was the most important variable accounting for speech recognition performance. The results indicate that older adults with high working memory capacity are able to capitalize on contextual cues and perform as well as young listeners with high working memory capacity for sentence recognition. The data also suggest that listeners with normal hearing and low working memory capacity are less able to adapt to distortion of speech signals caused by background noise, which requires the allocation of more processing resources to earlier processing stages. These results indicate that both younger and older adults with low working memory capacity and normal hearing are at a disadvantage for recognizing speech in noise.
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Gold, James M; Robinson, Benjamin; Leonard, Carly J; Hahn, Britta; Chen, Shuo; McMahon, Robert P; Luck, Steven J
2017-11-11
People with schizophrenia demonstrate impairments in selective attention, working memory, and executive function. Given the overlap in these constructs, it is unclear if these represent distinct impairments or different manifestations of one higher-order impairment. To examine this question, we administered tasks from the basic cognitive neuroscience literature to measure visual selective attention, working memory capacity, and executive function in 126 people with schizophrenia and 122 healthy volunteers. Patients demonstrated deficits on all tasks with the exception of selective attention guided by strong bottom-up inputs. Although the measures of top-down control of selective attention, working memory, and executive function were all intercorrelated, several sources of evidence indicate that working memory and executive function are separate sources of variance. Specifically, both working memory and executive function independently contributed to the discrimination of group status and independently accounted for variance in overall general cognitive ability as assessed by the MATRICS battery. These two cognitive functions appear to be separable features of the cognitive impairments observed in schizophrenia. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
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Hahn, Elizabeth A.; Lachman, Margie E.
2014-01-01
The present study examined the role of long-term working memory decline in the relationship between everyday experiences of memory problems and perceived control, and we also considered whether the use of accommodative strategies [selective optimization with compensation (SOC)] would be adaptive. The study included Boston-area participants (n=103) from the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS) who completed two working memory assessments over ten years and weekly diaries following Time 2. In adjusted multi-level analyses, greater memory decline and lower general perceived control were associated with more everyday memory problems. Low perceived control reported in a weekly diary was associated with more everyday memory problems among those with greater memory decline and low SOC strategy use (Est.=−0.28, SE=0.13, p=.036). These results suggest that the use of SOC strategies in the context of declining memory may help to buffer the negative effects of low perceived control on everyday memory. PMID:24597768
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Hahn, Elizabeth A; Lachman, Margie E
2015-01-01
The present study examined the role of long-term working memory decline in the relationship between everyday experiences of memory problems and perceived control, and we also considered whether the use of accommodative strategies [selective optimization with compensation (SOC)] would be adaptive. The study included Boston-area participants (n = 103) from the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS) who completed two working memory assessments over 10 years and weekly diaries following Time 2. In adjusted multi-level analyses, greater memory decline and lower general perceived control were associated with more everyday memory problems. Low perceived control reported in a weekly diary was associated with more everyday memory problems among those with greater memory decline and low SOC strategy use (Est. = -0.28, SE= 0.13, p = .036). These results suggest that the use of SOC strategies in the context of declining memory may help to buffer the negative effects of low perceived control on everyday memory.
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Grunewaldt, Kristine Hermansen; Skranes, Jon; Brubakk, Ann-Mari; Lähaugen, Gro C C
2016-02-01
Working memory deficits are frequently found in children born preterm and have been linked to learning disabilities, and cognitive and behavioural problems. Our aim was to evaluate if a computerized working memory training program has long-term positive effects on memory, learning, and behaviour in very-low-birthweight (VLBW) children at age 5 to 6 years. This prospective, intervention study included 20 VLBW preschool children in the intervention group and 17 age-matched, non-training VLBW children in the comparison group. The intervention group trained with the Cogmed JM working memory training program daily for 5 weeks (25 training sessions). Extensive neuropsychological assessment and parental questionnaires were performed 4 weeks after intervention and at follow-up 7 months later. For most of the statistical analyses, general linear models were applied. At follow-up, higher scores and increased or equal performance gain were found in the intervention group than the comparison group on memory for faces (p=0.012), narrative memory (p=0.002), and spatial span (p=0.003). No group differences in performance gain were found for attention and behaviour. Computerized working memory training seems to have positive and persisting effects on working memory, and visual and verbal learning, at 7-month follow-up in VLBW preschool children. We speculate that such training is beneficial by improving the ability to learn from the teaching at school and for further cognitive development. © 2015 Mac Keith Press.
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Differential working memory correlates for implicit sequence performance in young and older adults.
Bo, Jin; Jennett, S; Seidler, R D
2012-09-01
Our recent work has revealed that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) relates to the rate of explicit motor sequence learning (Bo and Seidler in J Neurophysiol 101:3116-3125, 2009) and implicit sequence performance (Bo et al. in Exp Brain Res 214:73-81, 2011a) in young adults (YA). Although aging has a detrimental impact on many cognitive functions, including working memory, older adults (OA) still rely on their declining working memory resources in an effort to optimize explicit motor sequence learning. Here, we evaluated whether age-related differences in VSWM and/or verbal working memory (VWM) performance relates to implicit performance change in the serial reaction time (SRT) sequence task in OA. Participants performed two computerized working memory tasks adapted from change detection working memory assessments (Luck and Vogel in Nature 390:279-281, 1997), an implicit SRT task and several neuropsychological tests. We found that, although OA exhibited an overall reduction in both VSWM and VWM, both OA and YA showed similar performance in the implicit SRT task. Interestingly, while VSWM and VWM were significantly correlated with each other in YA, there was no correlation between these two working memory scores in OA. In YA, the rate of SRT performance change (exponential fit to the performance curve) was significantly correlated with both VSWM and VWM, while in contrast, OA's performance was only correlated with VWM, and not VSWM. These results demonstrate differential reliance on VSWM and VWM for SRT performance between YA and OA. OA may utilize VWM to maintain optimized performance of second-order conditional sequences.
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Gait performance is not influenced by working memory when walking at a self-selected pace.
Grubaugh, Jordan; Rhea, Christopher K
2014-02-01
Gait performance exhibits patterns within the stride-to-stride variability that can be indexed using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). Previous work employing DFA has shown that gait patterns can be influenced by constraints, such as natural aging or disease, and they are informative regarding a person's functional ability. Many activities of daily living require concurrent performance in the cognitive and gait domains; specifically working memory is commonly engaged while walking, which is considered dual-tasking. It is unknown if taxing working memory while walking influences gait performance as assessed by DFA. This study used a dual-tasking paradigm to determine if performance decrements are observed in gait or working memory when performed concurrently. Healthy young participants (N = 16) performed a working memory task (automated operation span task) and a gait task (walking at a self-selected speed on a treadmill) in single- and dual-task conditions. A second dual-task condition (reading while walking) was included to control for visual attention, but also introduced a task that taxed working memory over the long term. All trials involving gait lasted at least 10 min. Performance in the working memory task was indexed using five dependent variables (absolute score, partial score, speed error, accuracy error, and math error), while gait performance was indexed by quantifying the mean, standard deviation, and DFA α of the stride interval time series. Two multivariate analyses of variance (one for gait and one for working memory) were used to examine performance in the single- and dual-task conditions. No differences were observed in any of the gait or working memory dependent variables as a function of task condition. The results suggest the locomotor system is adaptive enough to complete a working memory task without compromising gait performance when walking at a self-selected pace.
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Knowledge Cannot Explain the Developmental Growth of Working Memory Capacity
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cowan, Nelson; Ricker, Timothy J.; Clark, Katherine M.; Hinrichs, Garrett A.; Glass, Bret A.
2015-01-01
According to some views of cognitive growth, the development of working memory capacity can account for increases in the complexity of cognition. It has been difficult to ascertain, though, that there actually is developmental growth in capacity that cannot be attributed to other developing factors. Here we assess the role of item familiarity. We…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Swanson, H. Lee
2011-01-01
The role of working memory (WM) in children's growth in mathematical problem solving was examined in a longitudinal study of children (N = 127). A battery of tests was administered that assessed problem solving, achievement, WM, and cognitive processing (inhibition, speed, phonological coding) in Grade 1 children, with follow-up testing in Grades…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Al-Aidroos, Naseem; Emrich, Stephen M.; Ferber, Susanne; Pratt, Jay
2012-01-01
In four experiments we assessed whether visual working memory (VWM) maintains a record of previously processed visual information, allowing old information to be inhibited, and new information to be prioritized. Specifically, we evaluated whether VWM contributes to the inhibition (i.e., visual marking) of previewed distractors in a preview search.…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cahan, Sorel; Mor, Yaniv
2007-01-01
This article challenges Yaakov Kareev's (1995a, 2000) argument regarding the positive bias of intuitive correlation estimates due to working memory capacity limitations and its adaptive value. The authors show that, under narrow window theory's primacy effect assumption, there is a considerable between-individual variability of the effects of…
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A Controlled Trial of Working Memory Training for Children and Adolescents with ADHD
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Beck, Steven J.; Hanson, Christine A.; Puffenberger, Synthia S.; Benninger, Kristen L.; Benninger, William B.
2010-01-01
This study assessed the efficacy of a 5-week, intensive working memory training program for 52 children and adolescents (ages 7-17) who had Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other comorbid diagnoses. This study provided a treatment replication since the waitlist control group also completed training and was included in the…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Haavisto, Marja-Leena; Lehto, Juhani E.
2005-01-01
Fluid/spatial intelligence, crystallized intelligence and their relationships to verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) were studied. A total of 120 Finnish Air Force recruits participated in this study. Fluid/spatial intelligence was assessed using four different tasks, while crystallized intelligence was defined with the help of test scores…
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Working Memory Deficits in Children with Specific Learning Disorders
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schuchardt, Kirsten; Maehler, Claudia; Hasselhorn, Marcus
2008-01-01
This article examines working memory functioning in children with specific developmental disorders of scholastic skills as defined by ICD-10. Ninety-seven second to fourth graders with a minimum IQ of 80 are compared using a 2 x 2 factorial (dyscalculia vs. no dyscalculia; dyslexia vs. no dyslexia) design. An extensive test battery assesses the…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Brahmbhatt, Shefali B.; McAuley, Tara; Barch, Deanna M.
2008-01-01
Relatively little is known about the functional development of verbal and nonverbal working memory during adolescence. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that WM capacity increases with age, yet relatively few studies have assessed the relationship between brain-activity and age-related changes in WM capacity, especially as it differs across…
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Individual Differences in the Fan Effect and Working Memory Capacity
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bunting, M.F.; Conway, A.R.A.; Heitz, R.P.
2004-01-01
In opposition to conceptualizing working memory (WM) in terms of a general capacity, we present four experiments that favor the view that individual differences in WM depend on attentional control. High- and low-WM participants, as assessed by the operation span task, learned unrelated sentences for which the subject and predicate of the sentences…
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A Psychobiological Perspective on Working Memory Performance at 8 Months of Age
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bell, Martha Ann
2012-01-01
Fifty 8-month-old infants participated in a study of the interrelations among cognition, temperament, and electrophysiology. Better performance on a working memory task (assessed using a looking version of the A-not-B task) was associated with increases in frontal-parietal EEG coherence from baseline to task, as well as elevated levels of…
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Exploring Expressive Vocabulary Variability in Two-Year-Olds: The Role of Working Memory
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F.; Moran, Catherine
2015-01-01
Purpose: This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Method: Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Swanson, H. Lee
2011-01-01
This longitudinal study assessed (a) whether performance changes in working memory (WM) as a function of dynamic testing were related to growth in reading comprehension and (b) whether WM performance among subgroups of children with reading disabilities (RD; children with RD only, children with both reading and arithmetic deficits, and low verbal…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Desoete, Annemie; De Weerdt, Frauke
2013-01-01
Working memory, inhibition and naming speed was assessed in 22 children with mathematical learning disorders (MD), 17 children with a reading learning disorder (RD), and 45 children without any learning problems between 8 and 12 years old. All subjects with learning disorders performed poorly on working memory tasks, providing evidence that they…
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Pauls, Franz; Petermann, Franz; Lepach, Anja Christina
2013-01-01
Between-group comparisons are permissible and meaningfully interpretable only if diagnostic instruments are proved to measure the same latent dimensions across different groups. Addressing this issue, the present study was carried out to provide a rigorous test of measurement invariance. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to determine which model solution could best explain memory performance as measured by the Wechsler Memory Scale-Fourth Edition (WMS-IV) in a clinical depression sample and in healthy controls. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the evidence for measurement invariance. A three-factor model solution including the dimensions of auditory memory, visual memory, and visual working memory was identified to best fit the data in both samples, and measurement invariance was partially satisfied. The results supported clinical utility of the WMS-IV--that is, auditory and visual memory performances of patients with depressive disorders are interpretable on the basis of the WMS-IV standardization data. However, possible differences in visual working memory functions between healthy and depressed individuals could restrict comparisons of the WMS-IV working memory index.
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Memory: Why You're Losing It, How to Save It.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Smith, Lee
1995-01-01
Describes the five types of memory: (1) semantic--what words and symbols mean; (2) implicit--how to do something such as ride a bike; (3) remote--data collected over the years; (4) working--short-term memory; and (5) episodic--recent experiences. Assesses the likelihood of each type's decaying over time. (JOW)
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rhodes, Sinead M.; Park, Joanne; Seth, Sarah; Coghill, David R.
2012-01-01
Background: We conducted a comprehensive and systematic assessment of memory functioning in drug-naive boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Methods: Boys performed verbal and spatial working memory (WM) component (storage and central executive) and verbal and spatial storage load tasks,…
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Early Childhood Memory and Attention as Predictors of Academic Growth Trajectories
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stipek, Deborah; Valentino, Rachel A.
2015-01-01
Longitudinal data from the children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to assess how well measures of short-term and working memory and attention in early childhood predicted longitudinal growth trajectories in mathematics and reading comprehension. Analyses also examined whether changes in memory and attention were more…
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Long-term effects of frequent cannabis use on working memory and attention: an fMRI study.
Jager, Gerry; Kahn, Rene S; Van Den Brink, Wim; Van Ree, Jan M; Ramsey, Nick F
2006-04-01
Excessive use of cannabis may have long-term effects on cognitive abilities. Mild impairments have been found in several cognitive domains, particularly in memory and attention. It is not clear, however, whether these effects also occur with moderate, recreational use of cannabis. Furthermore, little is known about underlying brain correlates. The aim of this study is to assess brain function in frequent but relatively moderate cannabis users in the domains of working memory and selective attention. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine verbal working memory and visuo-auditory selective attention in ten frequent cannabis users (after 1 week of abstinence) and ten non-using healthy controls. Groups were similar in age, gender and estimated IQ. Cannabis users and controls performed equally well during the working memory task and the selective attention task. Furthermore, cannabis users did not differ from controls in terms of overall patterns of brain activity in the regions involved in these cognitive functions. However, for working memory, a more specific region-of-interest analysis showed that, in comparison to the controls, cannabis users displayed a significant alteration in brain activity in the left superior parietal cortex. No evidence was found for long-term deficits in working memory and selective attention in frequent cannabis users after 1 week of abstinence. Nonetheless, frequent cannabis use may affect brain function, as indicated by altered neurophysiological dynamics in the left superior parietal cortex during working memory processing.
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Episodic memory deficits slow down the dynamics of cognitive procedural learning in normal ageing
Beaunieux, Hélène; Hubert, Valérie; Pitel, Anne Lise; Desgranges, Béatrice; Eustache, Francis
2009-01-01
Cognitive procedural learning is characterized by three phases, each involving distinct processes. Considering the implication of the episodic memory in the first cognitive stage, the impairment of this memory system might be responsible for a slowing down of the cognitive procedural learning dynamics in the course of aging. Performances of massed cognitive procedural learning were evaluated in older and younger participants using the Tower of Toronto task. Nonverbal intelligence and psychomotor abilities were used to analyze procedural dynamics, while episodic memory and working memory were assessed to measure their respective contributions to learning strategies. This experiment showed that older participants did not spontaneously invoke episodic memory and presented a slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning associated with a late involvement of working memory. These findings suggest that the slowdown in the cognitive procedural learning may be linked with the implementation of different learning strategies less involving episodic memory in older subjects. PMID:18654928
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What People Believe about How Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population
Simons, Daniel J.; Chabris, Christopher F.
2011-01-01
Incorrect beliefs about the properties of memory have broad implications: The media conflate normal forgetting and inadvertent memory distortion with intentional deceit, juries issue verdicts based on flawed intuitions about the accuracy and confidence of testimony, and students misunderstand the role of memory in learning. We conducted a large representative telephone survey of the U.S. population to assess common beliefs about the properties of memory. Substantial numbers of respondents agreed with propositions that conflict with expert consensus: Amnesia results in the inability to remember one's own identity (83% of respondents agreed), unexpected objects generally grab attention (78%), memory works like a video camera (63%), memory can be enhanced through hypnosis (55%), memory is permanent (48%), and the testimony of a single confident eyewitness should be enough to convict a criminal defendant (37%). This discrepancy between popular belief and scientific consensus has implications from the classroom to the courtroom. PMID:21826204
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Ito, Takehito; Kimura, Yasuyuki; Seki, Chie; Ichise, Masanori; Yokokawa, Keita; Kawamura, Kazunori; Takahashi, Hidehiko; Higuchi, Makoto; Zhang, Ming-Rong; Suhara, Tetsuya; Yamada, Makiko
2018-06-14
The histamine H 3 receptor is regarded as a drug target for cognitive impairments in psychiatric disorders. H 3 receptors are expressed in neocortical areas, including the prefrontal cortex, the key region of cognitive functions such as working memory. However, the role of prefrontal H 3 receptors in working memory has not yet been clarified. Therefore, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) techniques, we aimed to investigate the association between the neural activity of working memory and the density of H 3 receptors in the prefrontal cortex. Ten healthy volunteers underwent both fMRI and PET scans. The N-back task was used to assess the neural activities related to working memory. H 3 receptor density was measured with the selective PET radioligand [ 11 C] TASP457. The neural activity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the performance of the N-back task was negatively correlated with the density of H 3 receptors in this region. Higher neural activity of working memory was associated with lower H 3 receptor density in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This finding elucidates the role of H 3 receptors in working memory and indicates the potential of H 3 receptors as a therapeutic target for the cognitive impairments associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.
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LeMoult, Joelle; Carver, Charles S; Johnson, Sheri L; Joormann, Jutta
2015-03-01
Studies on depression risk emphasize the importance of both cognitive and genetic vulnerability factors. The present study has provided the first examination of whether working memory capacity, the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism, and their interaction predict changes in symptoms of depression during the transition to university. Early in the semester, students completed a self-report measure of depressive symptoms and a modified version of the reading span task to assess working memory capacity in the presence of both neutral and negative distractors. Whole blood was genotyped for the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism. Students returned at the end of the semester to complete additional self-report questionnaires. Neither working memory capacity nor the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism predicted change in depressive symptoms either independently or in interaction with self-reported semester difficulty. The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism, however, moderated the association between working memory capacity and symptom change. Among met carriers, lower working memory capacity in the presence of negative-but not neutral-distractors was associated with increased symptoms of depression over the semester. For the val/val group, working memory capacity did not predict symptom change. These findings contribute directly to biological and cognitive models of depression and highlight the importance of examining Gene × Cognition interactions when investigating risk for depression.
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Noël, Xavier; Van der Linden, Martial; Brevers, Damien; Campanella, Salvatore; Verbanck, Paul; Hanak, Catherine; Kornreich, Charles; Verbruggen, Frederick
2013-03-01
Impulsivity is a hallmark of addictive behaviors. Addicts' weakened inhibition of irrelevant prepotent responses is commonly thought to explain this association. However, inhibition is not a unitary mechanism. This study investigated the efficiency of overcoming competition due to irrelevant responses (i.e., inhibition of a prepotent response) and overcoming competition in memory (i.e., resistance to proactive interference) in sober and recently detoxified alcohol-dependent individuals. Three cognitive tasks assessing the inhibition of a prepotent response (Hayling task, anti-saccade task and Stroop task) and two tasks tapping into the capacity to resist proactive interference (cued recall, Brown-Peterson variant) were administered to 30 non-amnesic recently detoxified alcohol-dependent individuals and 30 matched healthy participants without alcohol dependency. In addition, possible confounds such as verbal updating in working memory was assessed. Alcohol-dependent subjects performed worse than healthy participants on the three cognitive tasks assessing the inhibition of irrelevant prepotent responses but group performance was similar in the tasks assessing overcoming proactive interference in memory, updating of working memory and abstract reasoning. These findings suggest that alcohol-dependence is mainly associated with impaired capacity to intentionally suppress irrelevant prepotent response information. Control of proactive interference from memory is preserved. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Plancher, Gaën; Gyselinck, Valérie; Piolino, Pascale
2018-01-01
Memory is one of the most important cognitive functions in a person's life as it is essential for recalling personal memories and performing many everyday tasks. Although a huge number of studies have been conducted in the field, only a few of them investigated memory in realistic situations, due to methodological issues. The various tools that have been developed using virtual environments (VEs) have gained popularity in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology because they enable to create naturalistic and controlled situations, and are thus particularly adapted to the study of episodic memory (EM), for which an ecological evaluation is of prime importance. EM is the conscious recollection of personal events combined with their phenomenological and spatiotemporal encoding contexts. Using an original paradigm in a VE, the objective of the present study was to characterize the construction of episodic memories. While the concept of working memory has become central in the understanding of a wide range of cognitive functions, its role in the integration of episodic memories has seldom been assessed in an ecological context. This experiment aimed at filling this gap by studying how EM is affected by concurrent tasks requiring working memory resources in a realistic situation. Participants navigated in a virtual town and had to memorize as many elements in their spatiotemporal context as they could. During learning, participants had either to perform a concurrent task meant to prevent maintenance through the phonological loop, or a task aimed at preventing maintenance through the visuospatial sketchpad, or no concurrent task. EM was assessed in a recall test performed after learning through various scores measuring the what, where and when of the memories. Results showed that, compared to the control condition with no concurrent task, the prevention of maintenance through the phonological loop had a deleterious impact only on the encoding of central elements. By contrast, the prevention of visuo-spatial maintenance interfered both with the encoding of the temporal context and with the binding. These results suggest that the integration of realistic episodic memories relies on different working memory processes that depend on the nature of the traces.
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Knowledge Cannot Explain the Developmental Growth of Working Memory Capacity
Cowan, Nelson; Ricker, Timothy J.; Clark, Katherine M.; Hinrichs, Garrett A.; Glass, Bret A.
2014-01-01
According to some views of cognitive growth, the development of working memory capacity can account for increases in the complexity of cognition. It has been difficult to ascertain, though, that there actually is developmental growth in capacity that cannot be attributed to other developing factors. Here we assess the role of item familiarity. We document developmental increases in working memory for visual arrays of English letters versus unfamiliar characters. Although letter knowledge played a special role in development between the ages of 6 to 8 years, children with adequate letter knowledge showed practically the same developmental growth in normalized functions for letters and unfamiliar characters. The results contribute to a growing body of evidence that the developmental improvement in working memory does not wholly stem from supporting processes such as encoding, mnemonic strategies, and knowledge. PMID:24942111
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Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J.; Abreu, Neander; Nikaedo, Carolina C.; Puglisi, Marina L.; Tourinho, Carlos J.; Miranda, Mônica C.; Befi-Lopes, Debora M.; Bueno, Orlando F. A.; Martin, Romain
2014-01-01
This study examined executive functioning and reading achievement in 106 6- to 8-year-old Brazilian children from a range of social backgrounds of whom approximately half lived below the poverty line. A particular focus was to explore the executive function profile of children whose classroom reading performance was judged below standard by their teachers and who were matched to controls on chronological age, sex, school type (private or public), domicile (Salvador/BA or São Paulo/SP) and socioeconomic status. Children completed a battery of 12 executive function tasks that were conceptual tapping cognitive flexibility, working memory, inhibition and selective attention. Each executive function domain was assessed by several tasks. Principal component analysis extracted four factors that were labeled “Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility,” “Interference Suppression,” “Selective Attention,” and “Response Inhibition.” Individual differences in executive functioning components made differential contributions to early reading achievement. The Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility factor emerged as the best predictor of reading. Group comparisons on computed factor scores showed that struggling readers displayed limitations in Working Memory/Cognitive Flexibility, but not in other executive function components, compared to more skilled readers. These results validate the account that working memory capacity provides a crucial building block for the development of early literacy skills and extends it to a population of early readers of Portuguese from Brazil. The study suggests that deficits in working memory/cognitive flexibility might represent one contributing factor to reading difficulties in early readers. This might have important implications for how educators might intervene with children at risk of academic under achievement. PMID:24959155
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Differences in brain morphology and working memory capacity across childhood.
Bathelt, Joe; Gathercole, Susan E; Johnson, Amy; Astle, Duncan E
2018-05-01
Working memory (WM) skills are closely associated with learning progress in key areas such as reading and mathematics across childhood. As yet, however, little is known about how the brain systems underpinning WM develop over this critical developmental period. The current study investigated whether and how structural brain correlates of components of the working memory system change over development. Verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory were assessed in 153 children between 5.58 and 15.92 years, and latent components of the working memory system were derived. Fractional anisotropy and cortical thickness maps were derived from T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted MRI and processed using eigenanatomy decomposition. There was a greater involvement of the corpus callosum and posterior temporal white matter in younger children for performance associated with the executive part of the working memory system. For older children, this was more closely linked with the thickness of the occipitotemporal cortex. These findings suggest that increasing specialization leads to shifts in the contribution of neural substrates over childhood, moving from an early dependence on a distributed system supported by long-range connections to later reliance on specialized local circuitry. Our findings demonstrate that despite the component factor structure being stable across childhood, the underlying brain systems supporting working memory change. Taking the age of the child into account, and not just their overall score, is likely to be critical for understanding the nature of the limitations on their working memory capacity. © 2017 The Authors. Developmental Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Nikolaidis, Aki; Voss, Michelle W.; Lee, Hyunkyu; Vo, Loan T. K.; Kramer, Arthur F.
2014-01-01
Researchers have devoted considerable attention and resources to cognitive training, yet there have been few examinations of the relationship between individual differences in patterns of brain activity during the training task and training benefits on untrained tasks (i.e., transfer). While a predominant hypothesis suggests that training will transfer if there is training-induced plasticity in brain regions important for the untrained task, this theory lacks sufficient empirical support. To address this issue we investigated the relationship between individual differences in training-induced changes in brain activity during a cognitive training videogame, and whether those changes explained individual differences in the resulting changes in performance in untrained tasks. Forty-five young adults trained with a videogame that challenges working memory, attention, and motor control for 15 2-h sessions. Before and after training, all subjects received neuropsychological assessments targeting working memory, attention, and procedural learning to assess transfer. Subjects also underwent pre- and post-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they played the training videogame to assess how these patterns of brain activity change in response to training. For regions implicated in working memory, such as the superior parietal lobe (SPL), individual differences in the post-minus-pre changes in activation predicted performance changes in an untrained working memory task. These findings suggest that training-induced plasticity in the functional representation of a training task may play a role in individual differences in transfer. Our data support and extend previous literature that has examined the association between training related cognitive changes and associated changes in underlying neural networks. We discuss the role of individual differences in brain function in training generalizability and make suggestions for future cognitive training research. PMID:24711792
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Nikolaidis, Aki; Voss, Michelle W; Lee, Hyunkyu; Vo, Loan T K; Kramer, Arthur F
2014-01-01
Researchers have devoted considerable attention and resources to cognitive training, yet there have been few examinations of the relationship between individual differences in patterns of brain activity during the training task and training benefits on untrained tasks (i.e., transfer). While a predominant hypothesis suggests that training will transfer if there is training-induced plasticity in brain regions important for the untrained task, this theory lacks sufficient empirical support. To address this issue we investigated the relationship between individual differences in training-induced changes in brain activity during a cognitive training videogame, and whether those changes explained individual differences in the resulting changes in performance in untrained tasks. Forty-five young adults trained with a videogame that challenges working memory, attention, and motor control for 15 2-h sessions. Before and after training, all subjects received neuropsychological assessments targeting working memory, attention, and procedural learning to assess transfer. Subjects also underwent pre- and post-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while they played the training videogame to assess how these patterns of brain activity change in response to training. For regions implicated in working memory, such as the superior parietal lobe (SPL), individual differences in the post-minus-pre changes in activation predicted performance changes in an untrained working memory task. These findings suggest that training-induced plasticity in the functional representation of a training task may play a role in individual differences in transfer. Our data support and extend previous literature that has examined the association between training related cognitive changes and associated changes in underlying neural networks. We discuss the role of individual differences in brain function in training generalizability and make suggestions for future cognitive training research.
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Selective noradrenaline depletion impairs working memory and hippocampal neurogenesis.
Coradazzi, Marino; Gulino, Rosario; Fieramosca, Francesco; Falzacappa, Lucia Verga; Riggi, Margherita; Leanza, Giampiero
2016-12-01
Noradrenergic neurons in the locus coeruleus play a role in learning and memory, and their loss is an early event in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Moreover, noradrenaline may sustain hippocampal neurogenesis; however, whether are these events related is still unknown. Four to five weeks following the selective immunotoxic ablation of locus coeruleus neurons, young adult rats underwent reference and working memory tests, followed by postmortem quantitative morphological analyses to assess the extent of the lesion, as well as the effects on proliferation and/or survival of neural progenitors in the hippocampus. When tested in the Water Maze task, lesioned animals exhibited no reference memory deficit, whereas working memory abilities were seen significantly impaired, as compared with intact or sham-lesioned controls. Stereological analyses confirmed a dramatic noradrenergic neuron loss associated to reduced proliferation, but not survival or differentiation, of 5-bromo-2'deoxyuridine-positive progenitors in the dentate gyrus. Thus, ascending noradrenergic afferents may be involved in more complex aspects of cognitive performance (i.e., working memory) possibly via newly generated progenitors in the hippocampus. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Treating verbal working memory in a boy with intellectual disability
Orsolini, Margherita; Melogno, Sergio; Latini, Nausica; Penge, Roberta; Conforti, Sara
2015-01-01
The present case study investigates the effects of a cognitive training of verbal working memory that was proposed for Davide, a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with mild intellectual disability. The program stimulated attention, inhibition, switching, and the ability to engage either in verbal dual tasks or in producing inferences after the content of a short passage had been encoded in episodic memory. Key elements in our program included (1) core training of target cognitive mechanisms; (2) guided practice emphasizing concrete strategies to engage in exercises; and (3) a variable amount of adult support. The study explored whether such a complex program produced “near transfer” effects on an untrained dual task assessing verbal working memory and whether effects on this and other target cognitive mechanisms (i.e., attention, inhibition, and switching) were long-lasting and produced “far transfer” effects on cognitive flexibility. The effects of the intervention program were investigated with a research design consisting of four subsequent phases lasting 8 or 10 weeks, each preceded and followed by testing. There was a control condition (phase 1) in which the boy received, at home, a stimulation focused on the visuospatial domain. Subsequently, there were three experimental training phases, in which stimulation in the verbal domain was first focused on attention and inhibition (phase 2a), then on switching and simple working memory tasks (phase 2b), then on complex working memory tasks (phase 3). A battery of neuropsychological tests was administered before and after each training phase and 7 months after the conclusion of the intervention. The main finding was that Davide changed from being incapable of addressing the dual task request of the listening span test in the initial assessment to performing close to the normal limits of a 13-year-old boy in the follow-up assessment with this test, when he was 15 years old. PMID:26284014
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Hara, Yoko; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe
2015-01-01
Previous research indicates that relative to younger adults, older adults show a larger decline in long-term memory (LTM) for associations than for the components that make up these associations. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether we can impair associative memory performance in young adults by reducing their working memory (WM) resources, hence providing potential clues regarding the underlying causes of the associative memory deficit in older adults. With two experiments, we investigated whether we can reduce younger adults' long-term associative memory using secondary tasks in which either storage or processing WM loads were manipulated, while participants learned name-face pairs and then remembered the names, the faces, and the name-face associations. Results show that reducing either the storage or the processing resources of WM produced performance patterns of an associative long-term memory deficit in young adults. Furthermore, younger adults' associative memory deficit was a function of their performance on a working memory span task. These results indicate that one potential reason older adults have an associative deficit is a reduction in their WM resources but further research is needed to assess the mechanisms involved in age-related associative memory deficits.
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MRI-leukoaraiosis thresholds and the phenotypic expression of dementia
Mitchell, Sandra M.; Brumback, Babette; Tanner, Jared J.; Schmalfuss, Ilona; Lamar, Melissa; Giovannetti, Tania; Heilman, Kenneth M.; Libon, David J.
2012-01-01
Objective: To examine the concept of leukoaraiosis thresholds on working memory, visuoconstruction, memory, and language in dementia. Methods: A consecutive series of 83 individuals with insidious onset/progressive dementia clinically diagnosed with Alzheimer disease (AD) or small vessel vascular dementia (VaD) completed neuropsychological measures assessing working memory, visuoconstruction, episodic memory, and language. A clinical MRI scan was used to quantify leukoaraiosis, total white matter, hippocampus, lacune, and intracranial volume. We performed analyses to detect the lowest level of leukoaraiosis associated with impairment on the neuropsychological measures. Results: Leukoaraiosis ranged from 0.63% to 23.74% of participants' white matter. Leukoaraiosis explained a significant amount of variance in working memory performance when it involved 3% or more of the white matter with curve estimations showing the relationship to be nonlinear in nature. Greater leukoaraiosis (13%) was implicated for impairment in visuoconstruction. Relationships between leukoaraiosis, episodic memory, and language measures were linear or flat. Conclusions: Leukoaraiosis involves specific threshold points for working memory and visuoconstructional tests in AD/VaD spectrum dementia. These data underscore the need to better understand the threshold at which leukoaraiosis affects and alters the phenotypic expression in insidious onset dementia syndromes. PMID:22843264
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Control of Working Memory in Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta)
Tu, Hsiao-Wei; Hampton, Robert R.
2014-01-01
Cognitive control is critical for efficiently using the limited resources in working memory. It is well established that humans use rehearsal to increase the probability of remembering needed information, but little is known in nonhumans, with some studies reporting the absence of active control and others subject to alternative explanations. We trained monkeys in a visual matching-to-sample paradigm with a post-sample memory cue. Monkeys either saw a remember cue that predicted the occurrence of a matching test that required memory for the sample, or a forget cue that predicted a discrimination test that did not require memory of the sample. Infrequent probe trials on which monkeys were given tests of the type not cued on that trial were used to assess whether memory was under cognitive control. Our procedures controlled for reward expectation and for the surprising nature of the probes. Monkeys matched less accurately after forget cues, while discrimination accuracy was equivalent in the two cue conditions. We also tested monkeys with lists of two consecutive sample images that shared the same cue. Again, memory for expected memory tests was superior to that on unexpected tests. Together these results show that monkeys cognitively control their working memory. PMID:25436219
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White, David J; Cox, Katherine H M; Hughes, Matthew E; Pipingas, Andrew; Peters, Riccarda; Scholey, Andrew B
2016-01-01
This study explored the neurocognitive effects of 4 weeks daily supplementation with a multi-vitamin and -mineral combination (MVM) in healthy adults (aged 18-40 years). Using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, participants underwent assessments of brain activity using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI; n = 32, 16 females) and Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential recordings (SSVEP; n = 39, 20 females) during working memory and continuous performance tasks at baseline and following 4 weeks of active MVM treatment or placebo. There were several treatment-related effects suggestive of changes in functional brain activity associated with MVM administration. SSVEP data showed latency reductions across centro-parietal regions during the encoding period of a spatial working memory task following 4 weeks of active MVM treatment. Complementary results were observed with the fMRI data, in which a subset of those completing fMRI assessment after SSVEP assessment ( n = 16) demonstrated increased BOLD response during completion of the Rapid Visual Information Processing task (RVIP) within regions of interest including bilateral parietal lobes. No treatment-related changes in fMRI data were observed in those who had not first undergone SSVEP assessment, suggesting these results may be most evident under conditions of fatigue. Performance on the working memory and continuous performance tasks did not significantly differ between treatment groups at follow-up. In addition, within the fatigued fMRI sample, increased RVIP BOLD response was correlated with the change in number of target detections as part of the RVIP task. This study provides preliminary evidence of changes in functional brain activity during working memory associated with 4 weeks of daily treatment with a multi-vitamin and -mineral combination in healthy adults, using two distinct but complementary measures of functional brain activity.
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White, David J.; Cox, Katherine H. M.; Hughes, Matthew E.; Pipingas, Andrew; Peters, Riccarda; Scholey, Andrew B.
2016-01-01
This study explored the neurocognitive effects of 4 weeks daily supplementation with a multi-vitamin and -mineral combination (MVM) in healthy adults (aged 18–40 years). Using a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled design, participants underwent assessments of brain activity using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI; n = 32, 16 females) and Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential recordings (SSVEP; n = 39, 20 females) during working memory and continuous performance tasks at baseline and following 4 weeks of active MVM treatment or placebo. There were several treatment-related effects suggestive of changes in functional brain activity associated with MVM administration. SSVEP data showed latency reductions across centro-parietal regions during the encoding period of a spatial working memory task following 4 weeks of active MVM treatment. Complementary results were observed with the fMRI data, in which a subset of those completing fMRI assessment after SSVEP assessment (n = 16) demonstrated increased BOLD response during completion of the Rapid Visual Information Processing task (RVIP) within regions of interest including bilateral parietal lobes. No treatment-related changes in fMRI data were observed in those who had not first undergone SSVEP assessment, suggesting these results may be most evident under conditions of fatigue. Performance on the working memory and continuous performance tasks did not significantly differ between treatment groups at follow-up. In addition, within the fatigued fMRI sample, increased RVIP BOLD response was correlated with the change in number of target detections as part of the RVIP task. This study provides preliminary evidence of changes in functional brain activity during working memory associated with 4 weeks of daily treatment with a multi-vitamin and -mineral combination in healthy adults, using two distinct but complementary measures of functional brain activity. PMID:27994548
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Working memory and reward association learning impairments in obesity.
Coppin, Géraldine; Nolan-Poupart, Sarah; Jones-Gotman, Marilyn; Small, Dana M
2014-12-01
Obesity has been associated with impaired executive functions including working memory. Less explored is the influence of obesity on learning and memory. In the current study we assessed stimulus reward association learning, explicit learning and memory and working memory in healthy weight, overweight and obese individuals. Explicit learning and memory did not differ as a function of group. In contrast, working memory was significantly and similarly impaired in both overweight and obese individuals compared to the healthy weight group. In the first reward association learning task the obese, but not healthy weight or overweight participants consistently formed paradoxical preferences for a pattern associated with a negative outcome (fewer food rewards). To determine if the deficit was specific to food reward a second experiment was conducted using money. Consistent with Experiment 1, obese individuals selected the pattern associated with a negative outcome (fewer monetary rewards) more frequently than healthy weight individuals and thus failed to develop a significant preference for the most rewarded patterns as was observed in the healthy weight group. Finally, on a probabilistic learning task, obese compared to healthy weight individuals showed deficits in negative, but not positive outcome learning. Taken together, our results demonstrate deficits in working memory and stimulus reward learning in obesity and suggest that obese individuals are impaired in learning to avoid negative outcomes. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Swanson, H. Lee; Beebe-Frankenberger, Margaret
2004-01-01
This study identified cognitive processes that underlie individual differences in working memory (WM) and mathematical problem-solution accuracy in elementary school children at risk and not at risk for serious math difficulties (SMD). A battery of tests was administered that assessed problem solving, achievement, and cognitive processing in…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cockcroft, Kate; Bloch, Lauren; Moolla, Azra
2016-01-01
This study investigated whether measures of verbal working memory are less sensitive to children's socioeconomic background than traditional vocabulary measures. Participants were 120 school beginners, divided into high and low socioeconomic groups. The groups contained equal numbers of English first-language and second-language speakers. All were…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Salis, Christos; Kelly, Helen; Code, Chris
2015-01-01
Background: Aphasia following stroke refers to impairments that affect the comprehension and expression of spoken and/or written language, and co-occurring cognitive deficits are common. In this paper we focus on short-term and working memory impairments that impact on the ability to retain and manipulate auditory-verbal information. Evidence from…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J.; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L.; Befi-Lopes, Debora M.
2013-01-01
Purpose: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Method: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wang, Zuowei; Shah, Priti
2014-01-01
Sample: Fifty-three third and fourth graders from China participated in this study. Method: Participants' working memory (WM) was assessed by the Automated Operation Span task. Then, they solved mental addition problems of different types under low- and high-pressure conditions. Performance was analysed as a function of pressure condition, working…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Khurana, Atika; Romer, Daniel; Betancourt, Laura M.; Brodsky, Nancy L.; Giannetta, Joan M.; Hurt, Hallam
2012-01-01
Although deficits in working memory ability have been implicated in suboptimal decision making and risk taking among adolescents, its influence on early sexual initiation has so far not been examined. Analyzing 2 waves of panel data from a community sample of adolescents (N = 347; Mean age[subscript baseline] = 13.4 years), assessed 1 year apart,…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
McVay, Jennifer C.; Kane, Michael J.
2012-01-01
A combined experimental, individual-differences, and thought-sampling study tested the predictions of executive attention (e.g., Engle & Kane, 2004) and coordinative binding (e.g., Oberauer, Suss, Wilhelm, & Sander, 2007) theories of working memory capacity (WMC). We assessed 288 subjects' WMC and their performance and mind-wandering rates…
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Nowakowska-Domagała, Katarzyna; Jabłkowska-Górecka, Karolina; Mokros, Łukasz; Koprowicz, Jacek; Pietras, Tadeusz
2017-03-01
The aim of the study was to assess differences in verbal fluency, working memory and executive functions in two subgroups of alcohol-dependent patients, those undergoing short-term abstinence (STA) and those undergoing long-term abstinence (LTA), and to compare the level of cognitive functions in patients after long-term abstinence with healthy subjects. The study group consisted of 106 alcohol-dependent patients (53 immediately after drinking at least 3 days and 53 after at least one-year abstinence). The control group comprised 53 subjects, whose age, sex and education levels matched those of the patients in the experimental group. The dependence intensity was assessed using SADD and MAST scales. The neuropsychological assessment was based on the FAS Test, Stroop Test and TMT A&B Test. The results obtained for alcohol-dependent patients revealed significant disturbances of cognitive functions. Such results indicate the presence of severe frontal cerebral cortex dysfunctions. Frontal cortex dysfunctions affecting the verbal fluency and working memory subsystems and the executive functions also persisted during long-term abstinence periods. No significant correlations between the duration of dependence, quantity of alcohol consumed and efficiency of the working memory and executive functions were observed in alcohol-dependent subjects after short-term or long-term abstinence. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Vandenbroucke, Loren; Spilt, Jantine; Verschueren, Karine; Baeyens, Dieter
2017-01-01
Working memory, used to temporarily store and mentally manipulate information, is important for children's learning. It is therefore valuable to understand which (contextual) factors promote or hinder working memory performance. Recent research shows positive associations between positive parent-child and teacher-student interactions and working memory performance and development. However, no study has yet experimentally investigated how parents and teachers affect working memory performance. Based on attachment theory, the current study investigated the role of parent and teacher emotional support in promoting working memory performance by buffering the negative effect of social stress. Questionnaires and an experimental session were completed by 170 children from grade 1 to 2 ( M age = 7 years 6 months, SD = 7 months). Questionnaires were used to assess children's perceptions of the teacher-student and parent-child relationship. During an experimental session, working memory was measured with the Corsi task backward (Milner, 1971) in a pre- and post-test design. In-between the tests stress was induced in the children using the Cyberball paradigm (Williams et al., 2000). Emotional support was manipulated (between-subjects) through an audio message (either a weather report, a supportive message of a stranger, a supportive message of a parent, or a supportive message of a teacher). Results of repeated measures ANOVA showed no clear effect of the stress induction. Nevertheless, an effect of parent and teacher support was found and depended on the quality of the parent-child relationship. When children had a positive relationship with their parent, support of parents and teachers had little effect on working memory performance. When children had a negative relationship with their parent, a supportive message of that parent decreased working memory performance, while a supportive message from the teacher increased performance. In sum, the current study suggests that parents and teachers can support working memory performance by being supportive for the child. Teacher support is most effective when the child has a negative relationship with the parent. These insights can give direction to specific measures aimed at preventing and resolving working memory problems and related issues.
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Vandenbroucke, Loren; Spilt, Jantine; Verschueren, Karine; Baeyens, Dieter
2017-01-01
Working memory, used to temporarily store and mentally manipulate information, is important for children’s learning. It is therefore valuable to understand which (contextual) factors promote or hinder working memory performance. Recent research shows positive associations between positive parent–child and teacher–student interactions and working memory performance and development. However, no study has yet experimentally investigated how parents and teachers affect working memory performance. Based on attachment theory, the current study investigated the role of parent and teacher emotional support in promoting working memory performance by buffering the negative effect of social stress. Questionnaires and an experimental session were completed by 170 children from grade 1 to 2 (Mage = 7 years 6 months, SD = 7 months). Questionnaires were used to assess children’s perceptions of the teacher–student and parent–child relationship. During an experimental session, working memory was measured with the Corsi task backward (Milner, 1971) in a pre- and post-test design. In-between the tests stress was induced in the children using the Cyberball paradigm (Williams et al., 2000). Emotional support was manipulated (between-subjects) through an audio message (either a weather report, a supportive message of a stranger, a supportive message of a parent, or a supportive message of a teacher). Results of repeated measures ANOVA showed no clear effect of the stress induction. Nevertheless, an effect of parent and teacher support was found and depended on the quality of the parent–child relationship. When children had a positive relationship with their parent, support of parents and teachers had little effect on working memory performance. When children had a negative relationship with their parent, a supportive message of that parent decreased working memory performance, while a supportive message from the teacher increased performance. In sum, the current study suggests that parents and teachers can support working memory performance by being supportive for the child. Teacher support is most effective when the child has a negative relationship with the parent. These insights can give direction to specific measures aimed at preventing and resolving working memory problems and related issues. PMID:28421026
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Obradović, Jelena; Portilla, Ximena A; Tirado-Strayer, Nicole; Siyal, Saima; Rasheed, Muneera A; Yousafzai, Aisha K
2017-03-01
The current study focuses on maternal cognitive capacities as determinants of parenting in a highly disadvantaged global context, where children's experiences at home are often the 1st and only opportunity for learning and intellectual growth. In a large sample of 1,291 biological mothers of preschool-aged children in rural Pakistan, we examined the unique association of maternal working memory skills (independent of related cognitive capacities) with cognitively stimulating parenting behaviors. Path analysis revealed that directly assessed working memory, short-term memory, and verbal intelligence independently predicted greater levels of observed maternal scaffolding behaviors. Mothers from poorer families demonstrated lower levels of working memory, short-term memory, and verbal intelligence. However, mothers' participation in an early childhood parenting intervention that ended 2 years prior to this study contributed to greater levels of working memory skills and verbal intelligence. Further, all 3 domains of maternal cognitive capacity mediated the effect of family economic resources on maternal scaffolding, and verbal intelligence also mediated the effect of early parenting intervention exposure on maternal scaffolding. The study demonstrates the unique relevance of maternal working memory for scaffolding behaviors that required continuously monitoring the child's engagement, providing assistance, and minimizing external distractions. These results highlight the importance of directly targeting maternal cognitive capacities in poor women with little or no formal education, using a 2-generation intervention approach that includes activities known to promote parental executive functioning and literacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Cognitive Correlates of Perseverations in Individuals with Memory Impairment.
Kavé, Gitit; Heinik, Jeremia
2017-02-01
This study examines which cognitive measure best accounts for perseverations in individuals with memory impairment. The sample included 85 individuals, of whom 21 had subjective memory concerns, 27 had mild cognitive impairment, and 37 had Alzheimer's disease. Participants produced responses on a semantic category fluency task and on the ideational fluency (IF) task from the Cambridge Cognitive Examination-Revised. Measures of word finding, working memory, and abstract thinking were also assessed. Significant group differences in percentage of perseverations emerged on both tasks. No cognitive measure accounted for the percentage of perseverations on the semantic fluency task. A measure of abstract thinking was the best predictor of the percentage of perseverations on the IF task, followed by a measure of working memory. The underlying cognitive mechanisms that lead to perseverations differ across tasks, with perseverations on the IF task reflecting both conceptual deficits and working memory limitations. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
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Effect of tobacco craving cues on memory encoding and retrieval in smokers.
Heishman, Stephen J; Boas, Zachary P; Hager, Marguerite C; Taylor, Richard C; Singleton, Edward G; Moolchan, Eric T
2006-07-01
Previous studies have shown that cue-elicited tobacco craving disrupted performance on cognitive tasks; however, no study has examined directly the effect of cue-elicited craving on memory encoding and retrieval. A distinction between encoding and retireval has been reported such that memory is more impaired when attention is divided at encoding than at retrieval. This study tested the hypothesis that active imagery of smoking situations would impair encoding processes, but have little effect on retrieval. Imagery scripts (cigarette craving and neutral content) were presented either before presentation of a word list (encoding trials) or before word recall (retrieval trials). A working memory task at encoding and free recall of words were assessed. Results indicated that active imagery disrupted working memory on encoding trials, but not on retrieval trials. There was a trend toward impaired working memory following craving scripts compared with neutral scripts. These data support the hypothesis that the cognitive underpinnings of encoding and retrieval processes are distinct.
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The Box Task: A tool to design experiments for assessing visuospatial working memory.
Kessels, Roy P C; Postma, Albert
2017-09-15
The present paper describes the Box Task, a paradigm for the computerized assessment of visuospatial working memory. In this task, hidden objects have to be searched by opening closed boxes that are shown at different locations on the computer screen. The set size (i.e., number of boxes that must be searched) can be varied and different error scores can be computed that measure specific working memory processes (i.e., the number of within-search and between-search errors). The Box Task also has a developer's mode in which new stimulus displays can be designed for use in tailored experiments. The Box Task comes with a standard set of stimulus displays (including practice trials, as well as stimulus displays with 4, 6, and 8 boxes). The raw data can be analyzed easily and the results of individual participants can be aggregated into one spreadsheet for further statistical analyses.
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Is Word-Problem Solving a Form of Text Comprehension?
Fuchs, Lynn S.; Fuchs, Douglas; Compton, Donald L.; Hamlett, Carol L.; Wang, Amber Y.
2015-01-01
This study’s hypotheses were that (a) word-problem (WP) solving is a form of text comprehension that involves language comprehension processes, working memory, and reasoning, but (b) WP solving differs from other forms of text comprehension by requiring WP-specific language comprehension as well as general language comprehension. At the start of the 2nd grade, children (n = 206; on average, 7 years, 6 months) were assessed on general language comprehension, working memory, nonlinguistic reasoning, processing speed (a control variable), and foundational skill (arithmetic for WPs; word reading for text comprehension). In spring, they were assessed on WP-specific language comprehension, WPs, and text comprehension. Path analytic mediation analysis indicated that effects of general language comprehension on text comprehension were entirely direct, whereas effects of general language comprehension on WPs were partially mediated by WP-specific language. By contrast, effects of working memory and reasoning operated in parallel ways for both outcomes. PMID:25866461
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Tian, Fenghua; Yennu, Amarnath; Smith-Osborne, Alexa; Gonzalez-Lima, F; North, Carol S; Liu, Hanli
2014-01-01
Neuroimaging studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-related memory impairments have consistently implicated abnormal activities in the frontal and parietal lobes. However, most studies have used block designs and could not dissociate the multiple phases of working memory. In this study, the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in working memory phases was assessed among veterans with PTSD and age-/gender-matched healthy controls. Multichannel functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was utilized to measure prefrontal cortex hemodynamic activations during memory of neutral (i.e., not trauma-related) forward and backward digit span tasks. An event-related experimental design was utilized to dissociate the different phases (i.e., encoding, maintenance and retrieval) of working memory. The healthy controls showed robust hemodynamic activations during the encoding and retrieval processes. In contrast, the veterans with PTSD were found to have activations during the encoding process, but followed by distinct deactivations during the retrieval process. The PTSD participants, but not the controls, appeared to suppress prefrontal activity during memory retrieval. This deactivation was more pronounced in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during the retrieval phase. These deactivations in PTSD patients might implicate an active inhibition of dorsolateral prefrontal neural activity during retrieval of working memory.
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Age-related decline of precision and binding in visual working memory.
Peich, Muy-Cheng; Husain, Masud; Bays, Paul M
2013-09-01
Working memory declines with normal aging, but the nature of this impairment is debated. Studies based on detecting changes to arrays of visual objects have identified two possible components to age-related decline: a reduction in the number of items that can be stored, or a deficit in maintaining the associations (bindings) between individual object features. However, some investigations have reported intact binding with aging, and specific deficits arising only in Alzheimer's disease. Here, using a recently developed continuous measure of recall fidelity, we tested the precision with which adults of different ages could reproduce from memory the orientation and color of a probed array item. The results reveal a further component of cognitive decline: an age-related decrease in the resolution with which visual information can be maintained in working memory. This increase in recall variability with age was strongest under conditions of greater memory load. Moreover, analysis of the distribution of errors revealed that older participants were more likely to incorrectly report one of the unprobed items in memory, consistent with an age-related increase in misbinding. These results indicate a systematic decline with age in working memory resources that can be recruited to store visual information. The paradigm presented here provides a sensitive index of both memory resolution and feature binding, with the potential for assessing their modulation by interventions. The findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms underpinning working memory deficits in both health and disease.
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Age-Related Decline of Precision and Binding in Visual Working Memory
2013-01-01
Working memory declines with normal aging, but the nature of this impairment is debated. Studies based on detecting changes to arrays of visual objects have identified two possible components to age-related decline: a reduction in the number of items that can be stored, or a deficit in maintaining the associations (bindings) between individual object features. However, some investigations have reported intact binding with aging, and specific deficits arising only in Alzheimer’s disease. Here, using a recently developed continuous measure of recall fidelity, we tested the precision with which adults of different ages could reproduce from memory the orientation and color of a probed array item. The results reveal a further component of cognitive decline: an age-related decrease in the resolution with which visual information can be maintained in working memory. This increase in recall variability with age was strongest under conditions of greater memory load. Moreover, analysis of the distribution of errors revealed that older participants were more likely to incorrectly report one of the unprobed items in memory, consistent with an age-related increase in misbinding. These results indicate a systematic decline with age in working memory resources that can be recruited to store visual information. The paradigm presented here provides a sensitive index of both memory resolution and feature binding, with the potential for assessing their modulation by interventions. The findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms underpinning working memory deficits in both health and disease. PMID:23978008
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Andersen, Per N; Skogli, Erik W; Hovik, Kjell T; Geurts, Hilde; Egeland, Jens; Øie, Merete
2015-05-01
The aim of this study was to analyse the development of verbal working memory in children with high-functioning autism compared to children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and typically developing children. A total of 34 children with high-functioning autism, 72 children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and 45 typically developing children (age 9-16 years) were included at baseline and followed up approximately 25 months later. The children were given a letter/number sequencing task to assess verbal working memory. The performance of children with high-functioning autism on verbal working memory did not improve after 2 years, while improvement was observed in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and typically developing children. The results indicate a different developmental trajectory for verbal working memory in children with high-functioning autism compared to children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and typically developing children. More research is needed to construct a developmental framework more suitable for children with autism spectrum disorder. © The Author(s) 2014.
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Towe, Sheri L; Patel, Puja; Meade, Christina S
HIV-associated neurocognitive impairments that impact daily function persist in the era of effective antiretroviral therapy. Cognitive training, a promising low-cost intervention, has been shown to improve neurocognitive functioning in some clinical populations. We tested the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of computerized cognitive training to improve working memory in persons living with HIV infection (PLWH) and working memory impairment. In this randomized clinical trial, we assigned 21 adult PLWH to either an experimental cognitive training intervention or an attention-matched control training intervention. Participants completed 12 training sessions across 10 weeks with assessments at baseline and post-training. Session attendance was excellent and participants rated the program positively. Participants in the experimental arm demonstrated improved working memory function over time; participants in the control arm showed no change. Our results suggest that cognitive training may be a promising intervention for working memory impairment in PLWH and should be evaluated further. Copyright © 2017 Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Kuroishi, Rita Cristina Sadako; Garcia, Ricardo Basso; Valera, Fabiana Cardoso Pereira; Anselmo-Lima, Wilma Terezinha; Fukuda, Marisa Tomoe Hebihara
2015-01-01
Mouth breathing syndrome is very common among school-age children, and it is possibly related to learning difficulties and low academic achievement. In this study, we investigated working memory, reading comprehension and arithmetic skills in children with nasal and mouth breathing. Analytical cross-sectional study with control group conducted in a public university hospital. 42 children (mean age = 8.7 years) who had been identified as mouth breathers were compared with a control group (mean age = 8.4 years) matched for age and schooling. All the participants underwent a clinical interview, tone audiometry, otorhinolaryngological evaluation and cognitive assessment of phonological working memory (numbers and pseudowords), reading comprehension and arithmetic skills. Children with mouth breathing had poorer performance than controls, regarding reading comprehension (P = 0.006), arithmetic (P = 0.025) and working memory for pseudowords (P = 0.002), but not for numbers (P = 0.76). Children with mouth breathing have low academic achievement and poorer phonological working memory than controls. Teachers and healthcare professionals should be aware of the association of mouth breathing with children's physical and cognitive health.
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Al-Kuraishy, Hayder M
2016-01-01
The present study investigates the effect of combined treatment with Ginkgo biloba and/or Rhodiola rosea on psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) and short-term working memory accuracy. A total number of 112 volunteers were enrolled to study the effect of G. biloba and R. rosea on PVT and short-term working memory accuracy as compared to placebo effects, the central cognitive effect was assessed by critical flicker-fusion frequency, PVT, and computerized N-back test. Placebo produced no significant effects on all neurocognitive tests measure P > 0.05 in normal healthy volunteers, G. biloba or R. rosea improve PVT and low to moderate working memory accuracy, The combined effect of R. rosea and G. biloba leading to more significant effect on PVT, all levels of short-term working memory accuracy and critical fusion versus flicker P < 0.01, more than of G. biloba or R. rosea when they used alone. The combined effect of R. rosea and G. biloba leading to a more significant effect on cognitive function than either G. biloba or R. rosea when they used alone.
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Vrshek-Schallhorn, Suzanne; Velkoff, Elizabeth A; Zinbarg, Richard E
2018-04-06
Theoretical models of depression posit that, under stress, elevated trait rumination predicts more pronounced or prolonged negative affective and neuroendocrine responses, and that trait rumination hampers removing irrelevant negative information from working memory. We examined several gaps regarding these models in the context of lab-induced stress. Non-depressed undergraduates completed a rumination questionnaire and either a negative-evaluative Trier Social Stress Test (n = 55) or a non-evaluative control condition (n = 69), followed by a modified Sternberg affective working memory task assessing the extent to which irrelevant negative information can be emptied from working memory. We measured shame, negative and positive affect, and salivary cortisol four times. Multilevel growth curve models showed rumination and stress interactively predicted cortisol reactivity; however, opposite predictions, greater rumination was associated with blunted cortisol reactivity to stress. Elevated trait rumination interacted with stress to predict augmented shame reactivity. Rumination and stress did not significantly interact to predict working memory performance, but under control conditions, rumination predicted greater difficulty updating working memory. Results support a vulnerability-stress model of trait rumination with heightened shame reactivity and cortisol dysregulation rather than hyper-reactivity in non-depressed emerging adults, but we cannot provide evidence that working memory processes are critical immediately following acute stress.
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Reactivity to stress and the cognitive components of math disability in grade 1 children.
MacKinnon McQuarrie, Maureen A; Siegel, Linda S; Perry, Nancy E; Weinberg, Joanne
2014-01-01
This study investigated the relationship among working memory, processing speed, math performance, and reactivity to stress in 83 Grade 1 children. Specifically, 39 children with math disability (MD) were compared to 44 children who are typically achieving (TA) in mathematics. It is the first study to use a physiological index of stress (salivary cortisol levels) to measure children's reactivity while completing tasks that assess the core components of MD: working memory for numbers, working memory for words, digits backward, letter number sequence, digit span forward, processing speed for numbers and words, block rotation, and math tasks. Grade 1 children with MD obtained significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence and quantitative concepts tasks. Higher levels of reactivity significantly predicted poorer performance on the working memory for numbers, working memory for words, and quantitative concepts tasks for Grade 1 children, regardless of math ability. Grade 1 children with MD and higher reactivity had significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence task than the children with MD and low reactivity. The findings suggest that high reactivity impairs performance in working memory and math tasks in Grade 1 children, and young children with high reactivity may benefit from interventions aimed at lowering anxiety in stressful situations, which may improve learning. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2012.
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Reactivity to Stress and the Cognitive Components of Math Disability in Grade 1 Children
MacKinnon McQuarrie, Maureen A.; Siegel, Linda S.; Perry, Nancy E.; Weinberg, Joanne
2016-01-01
This study investigated the relationship among working memory, processing speed, math performance, and reactivity to stress in 83 Grade 1 children. Specifically, 39 children with math disability (MD) were compared to 44 children who are typically achieving (TA) in mathematics. It is the first study to use a physiological index of stress (salivary cortisol levels) to measure children’s reactivity while completing tasks that assess the core components of MD: working memory for numbers, working memory for words, digits backward, letter number sequence, digit span forward, processing speed for numbers and words, block rotation, and math tasks. Grade 1 children with MD obtained significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence and quantitative concepts tasks. Higher levels of reactivity significantly predicted poorer performance on the working memory for numbers, working memory for words, and quantitative concepts tasks for Grade 1 children, regardless of math ability. Grade 1 children with MD and higher reactivity had significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence task than the children with MD and low reactivity. The findings suggest that high reactivity impairs performance in working memory and math tasks in Grade 1 children, and young children with high reactivity may benefit from interventions aimed at lowering anxiety in stressful situations, which may improve learning. PMID:23124381
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Brandenburg, Janin; Klesczewski, Julia; Fischbach, Anne; Schuchardt, Kirsten; Büttner, Gerhard; Hasselhorn, Marcus
2015-01-01
In transparent orthographies like German, isolated learning disabilities in either reading or spelling are common and occur as often as a combined reading and spelling disability. However, most issues surrounding the cognitive causes of these isolated or combined literacy difficulties are yet unresolved. Recently, working memory dysfunctions have been demonstrated to be promising in explaining the emergence of literacy difficulties. Thus, we applied a 2 (reading disability: yes vs. no) × 2 (spelling disability: yes vs. no) factorial design to examine distinct and overlapping working memory profiles associated with learning disabilities in reading versus spelling. Working memory was assessed in 204 third graders, and multivariate analyses of variance were conducted for each working memory component. Children with spelling disability suffered from more pronounced phonological loop impairments than those with reading disability. In contrast, domain-general central-executive dysfunctions were solely associated with reading disability, but not with spelling disability. Concerning the visuospatial sketchpad, no impairments were found. In sum, children with reading disability and those with spelling disability seem to be characterized by different working memory profiles. Thus, it is important to take both reading and spelling into account when investigating cognitive factors of literacy difficulties in transparent orthographies. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2014.
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The influence of shift work on cognitive functions and oxidative stress.
Özdemir, Pınar Güzel; Selvi, Yavuz; Özkol, Halil; Aydın, Adem; Tülüce, Yasin; Boysan, Murat; Beşiroğlu, Lütfullah
2013-12-30
Shift work influences health, performance, activity, and social relationships, and it causes impairment in cognitive functions. In this study, we investigated the effects of shift work on participants' cognitive functions in terms of memory, attention, and learning, and we measured the effects on oxidative stress. Additionally, we investigated whether there were significant relationships between cognitive functions and whole blood oxidant/antioxidant status of participants. A total of 90 health care workers participated in the study, of whom 45 subjects were night-shift workers. Neuropsychological tests were administered to the participants to assess cognitive function, and blood samples were taken to detect total antioxidant capacity and total oxidant status at 08:00. Differences in anxiety, depression, and chronotype characteristics between shift work groups were not significant. Shift workers achieved significantly lower scores on verbal memory, attention-concentration, and the digit span forward sub-scales of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R), as well as on the immediate memory and total learning sub-scales of the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT). Oxidative stress parameters were significantly associated with some types of cognitive function, including attention-concentration, recognition, and long-term memory. These findings suggest that night shift work may result in significantly poorer cognitive performance, particularly working memory. © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Jeon, Yujin; Kim, Binna; Kim, Jieun E; Kim, Bori R; Ban, Soonhyun; Jeong, Jee Hyang; Kwon, Oran; Rhie, Sandy Jeong; Ahn, Chang-Won; Kim, Jong-Hoon; Jung, Sung Ug; Park, Soo-Hyun; Lyoo, In Kyoon; Yoon, Sujung
2016-01-01
This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial examined whether the administration of ganglioside, an active ingredient of deer bone extract, can improve working memory performance by increasing gray matter volume and functional connectivity in the default mode network (DMN) in individuals with subjective cognitive impairment. Seventy-five individuals with subjective cognitive impairment were chosen to receive either ganglioside (330[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]g/day or 660[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]g/day) or a placebo for 8 weeks. Changes in working memory performance with treatment of either ganglioside or placebo were assessed as cognitive outcome measures. Using voxel-based morphometry and functional connectivity analyses, changes in gray matter volume and functional connectivity in the DMN were also assessed as brain outcome measures. Improvement in working memory performance was greater in the ganglioside group than in the placebo group. The ganglioside group, relative to the placebo group, showed greater increases in gray matter volume and functional connectivity in the DMN. A significant relationship between increased functional connectivity of the precuneus and improved working memory performance was observed in the ganglioside group. The current findings suggest that ganglioside has cognitive-enhancing effects in individuals with subjective cognitive impairment. Ganglioside-induced increases in gray matter volume and functional connectivity in the DMN may partly be responsible for the potential nootropic effects of ganglioside. The clinical trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier: NCT02379481).
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Wassenburg, Stephanie I.; de Koning, Björn B.; de Vries, Meinou H.; van der Schoot, Menno
2016-01-01
Using a component processes task (CPT) that differentiates between higher-level cognitive processes of reading comprehension provides important advantages over commonly used general reading comprehension assessments. The present study contributes to further development of the CPT by evaluating the relative contributions of its components (text memory, text inferencing, and knowledge integration) and working memory to general reading comprehension within a single study using path analyses. Participants were 173 third- and fourth-grade children. As hypothesized, knowledge integration was the only component of the CPT that directly contributed to reading comprehension, indicating that the text-inferencing component did not assess inferential processes related to reading comprehension. Working memory was a significant predictor of reading comprehension over and above the component processes. Future research should focus on finding ways to ensure that the text-inferencing component taps into processes important for reading comprehension. PMID:27378989
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Rapid Dynamic Assessment of Expertise to Improve the Efficiency of Adaptive Elearning
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kalyuga, Slava; Sweller, John
2005-01-01
In this article we suggest a method of evaluating learner expertise based on assessment of the content of working memory and the extent to which cognitive load has been reduced by knowledge retrieved from long-term memory. The method was tested in an experiment with an elementary algebra tutor using a yoked control design. In the learner-adapted…
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Cabrera-Pastor, Andrea; Hernandez-Rabaza, Vicente; Taoro-Gonzalez, Lucas; Balzano, Tiziano; Llansola, Marta; Felipo, Vicente
2016-10-01
Patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) show working memory and visuo-spatial orientation deficits. Hyperammonemia is a main contributor to cognitive impairment in HE. Hyperammonemic rats show impaired spatial learning and learning ability in the Y maze. Intracerebral administration of extracellular cGMP restores learning in the Y-maze. The underlying mechanisms remain unknown. It also remains unknown whether extracellular cGMP improves neuroinflammation or restores spatial learning in hyperammonemic rats and if it affects differently reference and working memory. The aims of this work were: Spatial working and reference memory were assessed using the radial and Morris water mazes and neuroinflammation by immunohistochemistry and Western blot. Membrane expression of NMDA and AMPA receptor subunits was analyzed using the BS3 crosslinker. Extracellular cGMP was administered intracerebrally using osmotic minipumps. Chronic hyperammonemia induces neuroinflammation in hippocampus, with astrocytes activation and increased IL-1β, which are associated with increased NMDA receptors membrane expression and impaired working memory. This process is not affected by extracellular cGMP. Hyperammonemia also activates microglia and increases TNF-α, alters membrane expression of AMPA receptor subunits (increased GluA1 and reduced GluA2) and impairs reference memory. All these changes are reversed by extracellular cGMP. These results show that extracellular cGMP modulates spatial reference memory but not working memory. This would be mediated by modulation of TNF-α levels and of membrane expression of GluA1 and GluA2 subunits of AMPA receptors. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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de Abreu, Pascale M J Engel; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L; Befi-Lopes, Debora M
2013-04-01
In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.
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Cain, Kate
2006-07-01
Three experiments compared the verbal memory skills of children with poor reading comprehension with that of same-age good comprehenders. The aims were to determine if semantic and/or inhibitory deficits explained comprehenders' problems on measures of verbal short-term memory and verbal working memory. In Experiment 1 there were no group differences on word- and number-based measures of short-term storage and no evidence that semantic knowledge mediated word recall. In Experiment 2 poor comprehenders were impaired on word- and number-based assessments of working memory, the greatest deficit found on the word-based task. Error analysis of both word-based tasks revealed that poor comprehenders were more likely to recall items that should have been inhibited than were good comprehenders. Experiment 3 extended this finding: Poor comprehenders were less able to inhibit information that was no longer relevant. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in inhibitory processing influence the ability to regulate the contents of working memory, which may contribute to the differential memory performance of good and poor comprehenders.
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Effects of emotionally valenced working memory taxation on negative memories.
Tsai, Cynthia; McNally, Richard J
2014-03-01
Memories enter a labile state during recollection. Thus, memory changes that occur during recollection can affect future instances of its activation. Having subjects perform a secondary task that taxes working memory while they recall a negative emotional memory often reduces its vividness and emotional intensity during subsequent recollections. However, researchers have not manipulated the emotional valence of the secondary task itself. Subjects viewed a video depicting the aftermath of three fatal road traffic accidents, establishing the same negative emotional memory for all subjects. We then tested their memory for the video after randomly assigning them to no secondary task or a delayed match-to-sample secondary task involving photographs of positive, negative, or neutral emotional valence. The positive secondary task reduced memory for details about the video, whereas negative and neutral tasks did not. We did not assess the vividness and emotionality of the subjects' memory of the video. Having subjects recall a stressful experience while performing a positively valent secondary task can decrement details of the memory and perhaps its emotionality. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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van Ede, Freek; Niklaus, Marcel; Nobre, Anna C
2017-01-11
Although working memory is generally considered a highly dynamic mnemonic store, popular laboratory tasks used to understand its psychological and neural mechanisms (such as change detection and continuous reproduction) often remain relatively "static," involving the retention of a set number of items throughout a shared delay interval. In the current study, we investigated visual working memory in a more dynamic setting, and assessed the following: (1) whether internally guided temporal expectations can dynamically and reversibly prioritize individual mnemonic items at specific times at which they are deemed most relevant; and (2) the neural substrates that support such dynamic prioritization. Participants encoded two differently colored oriented bars into visual working memory to retrieve the orientation of one bar with a precision judgment when subsequently probed. To test for the flexible temporal control to access and retrieve remembered items, we manipulated the probability for each of the two bars to be probed over time, and recorded EEG in healthy human volunteers. Temporal expectations had a profound influence on working memory performance, leading to faster access times as well as more accurate orientation reproductions for items that were probed at expected times. Furthermore, this dynamic prioritization was associated with the temporally specific attenuation of contralateral α (8-14 Hz) oscillations that, moreover, predicted working memory access times on a trial-by-trial basis. We conclude that attentional prioritization in working memory can be dynamically steered by internally guided temporal expectations, and is supported by the attenuation of α oscillations in task-relevant sensory brain areas. In dynamic, everyday-like, environments, flexible goal-directed behavior requires that mental representations that are kept in an active (working memory) store are dynamic, too. We investigated working memory in a more dynamic setting than is conventional, and demonstrate that expectations about when mnemonic items are most relevant can dynamically and reversibly prioritize these items in time. Moreover, we uncover a neural substrate of such dynamic prioritization in contralateral visual brain areas and show that this substrate predicts working memory retrieval times on a trial-by-trial basis. This places the experimental study of working memory, and its neuronal underpinnings, in a more dynamic and ecologically valid context, and provides new insights into the neural implementation of attentional prioritization within working memory. Copyright © 2017 van Ede et al.
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Modulation of selective attention by polarity-specific tDCS effects.
Pecchinenda, Anna; Ferlazzo, Fabio; Lavidor, Michal
2015-02-01
Selective attention relies on working memory to maintain an attention set of task priorities. Consequently, selective attention is more efficient when working memory resources are not depleted. However, there is some evidence that distractors are processed even when working memory load is low. We used tDCS to assess whether boosting the activity of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC), involved in selective attention and working memory, would reduce interference from emotional distractors. Findings showed that anodal tDCS over the DLPFC was not sufficient to reduce interference from angry distractors. In contrast, cathodal tDCS over the DLPFC reduced interference from happy distractors. These findings show that altering the DLPFC activity is not sufficient to establish top-down control and increase selective attention efficiency. Although, when the neural signal in the DLPFC is altered by cathodal tDCS, interference from emotional distractors is reduced, leading to an improved performance. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Tactile perception and working memory in rats and humans
Fassihi, Arash; Akrami, Athena; Esmaeili, Vahid; Diamond, Mathew E.
2014-01-01
Primates can store sensory stimulus parameters in working memory for subsequent manipulation, but until now, there has been no demonstration of this capacity in rodents. Here we report tactile working memory in rats. Each stimulus is a vibration, generated as a series of velocity values sampled from a normal distribution. To perform the task, the rat positions its whiskers to receive two such stimuli, “base” and “comparison,” separated by a variable delay. It then judges which stimulus had greater velocity SD. In analogous experiments, humans compare two vibratory stimuli on the fingertip. We demonstrate that the ability of rats to hold base stimulus information (for up to 8 s) and their acuity in assessing stimulus differences overlap the performance demonstrated by humans. This experiment highlights the ability of rats to perceive the statistical structure of vibrations and reveals their previously unknown capacity to store sensory information in working memory. PMID:24449850
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Working memory span and motor and cognitive speed in schizophrenia.
Brébion, Gildas; David, Anthony S; Jones, Hugh M; Pilowsky, Lyn S
2009-06-01
The aim of this study was to investigate the verbal working memory deficit and decrease of motor and cognitive speed in patients with schizophrenia, and to clarify their associations with negative and depressive symptomatology. Forty patients with schizophrenia and 41 healthy control individuals were administered the backward digit span to assess the working memory capacity, along with 3 tests of processing speed. Patients demonstrated reduced backward digit span, as well as decreased motor and cognitive speed. Regression analyses indicated that the backward digit span was associated with cognitive speed. It was not associated with either negative or depressive symptoms. Decreased processing speed was unrelated to negative symptoms, but the depression score was significantly associated with the cognitive speed measure. Working memory and processing speed seem to share a cognitive component. Depression, but not negative symptoms, affects processing speed, especially by decreasing cognitive speed.
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Barnes, Jessica J; Nobre, Anna Christina; Woolrich, Mark W; Baker, Kate; Astle, Duncan E
2016-08-24
Working memory is a capacity upon which many everyday tasks depend and which constrains a child's educational progress. We show that a child's working memory can be significantly enhanced by intensive computer-based training, relative to a placebo control intervention, in terms of both standardized assessments of working memory and performance on a working memory task performed in a magnetoencephalography scanner. Neurophysiologically, we identified significantly increased cross-frequency phase amplitude coupling in children who completed training. Following training, the coupling between the upper alpha rhythm (at 16 Hz), recorded in superior frontal and parietal cortex, became significantly coupled with high gamma activity (at ∼90 Hz) in inferior temporal cortex. This altered neural network activity associated with cognitive skill enhancement is consistent with a framework in which slower cortical rhythms enable the dynamic regulation of higher-frequency oscillatory activity related to task-related cognitive processes. Whether we can enhance cognitive abilities through intensive training is one of the most controversial topics of cognitive psychology in recent years. This is particularly controversial in childhood, where aspects of cognition, such as working memory, are closely related to school success and are implicated in numerous developmental disorders. We provide the first neurophysiological account of how working memory training may enhance ability in childhood, using a brain recording technique called magnetoencephalography. We borrowed an analysis approach previously used with intracranial recordings in adults, or more typically in other animal models, called "phase amplitude coupling." Copyright © 2016 Barnes et al.
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Barnes, Jessica J.; Nobre, Anna Christina; Woolrich, Mark W.; Baker, Kate
2016-01-01
Working memory is a capacity upon which many everyday tasks depend and which constrains a child's educational progress. We show that a child's working memory can be significantly enhanced by intensive computer-based training, relative to a placebo control intervention, in terms of both standardized assessments of working memory and performance on a working memory task performed in a magnetoencephalography scanner. Neurophysiologically, we identified significantly increased cross-frequency phase amplitude coupling in children who completed training. Following training, the coupling between the upper alpha rhythm (at 16 Hz), recorded in superior frontal and parietal cortex, became significantly coupled with high gamma activity (at ∼90 Hz) in inferior temporal cortex. This altered neural network activity associated with cognitive skill enhancement is consistent with a framework in which slower cortical rhythms enable the dynamic regulation of higher-frequency oscillatory activity related to task-related cognitive processes. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Whether we can enhance cognitive abilities through intensive training is one of the most controversial topics of cognitive psychology in recent years. This is particularly controversial in childhood, where aspects of cognition, such as working memory, are closely related to school success and are implicated in numerous developmental disorders. We provide the first neurophysiological account of how working memory training may enhance ability in childhood, using a brain recording technique called magnetoencephalography. We borrowed an analysis approach previously used with intracranial recordings in adults, or more typically in other animal models, called “phase amplitude coupling.” PMID:27559180
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Sturge-Apple, Melissa L.; Suor, Jennifer H.; Skibo, Michael A.
2015-01-01
Cognitive models of parenting give emphasis to the central role that parental cognitions may play in parental socialization goals. In particular, dual process models suggest that parental attribution styles affect the way parents interpret caregiving situations and enact behaviors, particularly within the realm of discipline. Although research has documented the negative behavioral repercussions of dysfunctional child-centered responsibility biases, there is heterogeneity in the level of these associations. Research has also demonstrated that parental working memory capacity may serve as an individual difference factor in influencing caregiving behaviors. Thus, our first aim was to document how maternal working memory capacity may moderate the association between mother’s dysfunctional child-oriented attributions and use of harsh discipline. In addition, from an ecological perspective, a second aim was to examine how socioeconomic risk may further potentiate the impact of maternal working memory. To accomplish these aims, a socioeconomically diverse sample of 185 mothers and their three-year old children were recruited to participate in a laboratory-based research assessment. Findings revealed that lower maternal working memory capacity may operate as a risk factor for attributional biases and harsh discipline, while higher working memory may serve as a protective factor in this relationship. Socioeconomic risk further moderated these findings. Results suggest that the moderating role of working memory may be particularly pronounced under conditions of socio-economic risk. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. PMID:25221969
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Chen, Eric Y H; Hui, Christy L M
2012-08-01
Evidence suggests that HT1001™, a proprietary North American ginseng extract containing known levels of active ginsenosides, may improve cognitive function. Importantly, individuals with schizophrenia show marked deficits in working memory, which are believed to be predictive of functional outcome in this population. The present study aimed to characterize the effect of HT1001 on working memory in a group of stable individuals with schizophrenia. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study design, a total of 64 individuals satisfying DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia were randomly assigned to receive either HT100 or placebo for 4 weeks. Verbal working memory and visual working memory were assessed at baseline and again at the end of the treatment phase using the Letter-Number Span Test and Visual Pattern Test, respectively. Symptoms and medication side effects were also measured at baseline and post-treatment. Visual working memory was significantly improved in the HT1001 group, but not in the placebo group. Furthermore, extrapyramidal symptoms were significantly reduced after 4 weeks treatment with HT1001, whereas no difference in extrapyramidal effects was observed in the placebo group. These results provide a solid foundation for the further investigation of HT1001 as an adjunct therapy in schizophrenia, as an improvement in working memory and a reduction in medication-related side effects has considerable potential to improve functional outcome in this population. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Sturge-Apple, Melissa L; Suor, Jennifer H; Skibo, Michael A
2014-10-01
Cognitive models of parenting give emphasis to the central role that parental cognitions may play in parental socialization goals. In particular, dual process models suggest that parental attribution styles affect the way parents interpret caregiving situations and enact behaviors, particularly within the realm of discipline. Although research has documented the negative behavioral repercussions of dysfunctional child-centered responsibility biases, there is heterogeneity in the level of these associations. Research has also demonstrated that parental working memory capacity may serve as an individual difference factor in influencing caregiving behaviors. Thus, our first aim was to document how maternal working memory capacity may moderate the association between mother's dysfunctional child-oriented attributions and use of harsh discipline. In addition, from an ecological perspective, a second aim was to examine how socioeconomic risk may further potentiate the impact of maternal working memory. To accomplish these aims, a socioeconomically diverse sample of 185 mothers and their 3-year old children were recruited to participate in a laboratory-based research assessment. Findings revealed that lower maternal working memory capacity may operate as a risk factor for attributional biases and harsh discipline, and higher working memory may serve as a protective factor in this relationship. Socioeconomic risk further moderated these findings. Results suggest that the moderating role of working memory may be particularly pronounced under conditions of socioeconomic risk. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
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Cognitive Training Program to Improve Working Memory in Older Adults with MCI.
Hyer, Lee; Scott, Ciera; Atkinson, Mary Michael; Mullen, Christine M; Lee, Anna; Johnson, Aaron; Mckenzie, Laura C
2016-01-01
Deficits in working memory (WM) are associated with age-related decline. We report findings from a clinical trial that examined the effectiveness of Cogmed, a computerized program that trains WM. We compare this program to a Sham condition in older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Older adults (N = 68) living in the community were assessed. Participants reported memory impairment and met criteria for MCI, either by poor delayed memory or poor performance in other cognitive areas. The Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS, Delayed Memory Index) and the Clinical Dementia Rating scale (CDR) were utilized. All presented with normal Mini Mental State Exams (MMSE) and activities of daily living (ADLs). Participants were randomized to Cogmed or a Sham computer program. Twenty-five sessions were completed over five to seven weeks. Pre, post, and follow-up measures included a battery of cognitive measures (three WM tests), a subjective memory scale, and a functional measure. Both intervention groups improved over time. Cogmed significantly outperformed Sham on Span Board and exceeded in subjective memory reports at follow-up as assessed by the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ). The Cogmed group demonstrated better performance on the Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ), a measure of adjustment and far transfer, at follow-up. Both groups, especially Cogmed, enjoyed the intervention. Results suggest that WM was enhanced in both groups of older adults with MCI. Cogmed was better on one core WM measure and had higher ratings of satisfaction. The Sham condition declined on adjustment.
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Adler, Georg; Lembach, Yvonne
2015-08-01
Cognitive impairments may have a severe impact on everyday functioning and quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). However, there are some methodological problems in the assessment and only a few studies allow a representative estimate of the prevalence and severity of cognitive impairments in MS patients. We applied a computer-based method, the memory and attention test (MAT), in 531 outpatients with MS, who were assessed at nine neurological practices or specialized outpatient clinics. The findings were compared with those obtained in an age-, sex- and education-matched control group of 84 healthy subjects. Episodic short-term memory was substantially decreased in the MS patients. About 20% of them reached a score of only less than two standard deviations below the mean of the control group. The episodic short-term memory score was negatively correlated with the EDSS score. Minor but also significant impairments in the MS patients were found for verbal short-term memory, episodic working memory and selective attention. The computer-based MAT was found to be useful for a routine assessment of cognition in MS outpatients.
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Sleep problems across development: a pathway to adolescent risk taking through working memory.
Thomas, April Gile; Monahan, Kathryn C; Lukowski, Angela F; Cauffman, Elizabeth
2015-02-01
Problematic sleep can be detrimental to the development of important cognitive functions, such as working memory, and may have the potential for negative behavioral consequences, such as risk-taking. In this way, sleep problems may be particularly harmful for youth-whose cognitive abilities are still developing and who are more susceptible to risky behavior. Using data from a large, national, longitudinal study, continuity and change in sleep problems were examined from 2 to 15 years of age and associated with deficits in working memory at age 15 and risk taking behaviors at age 18. Participants (N = 1,364 children; 48.3% female) were assessed for sleep problems (parent-report), working memory (behavioral task), and risk taking behavior (youth self-report). The sample was predominantly White (80.4%); additional races represented in the sample included Black/African American (12.9%), Asian/Pacific Islander (1.6%), American Indian/Eskimo/Aleut (.4%), and Other (4.7%). The findings suggest that sleep problems are likely to cascade across development, with sleep problems demonstrating continuity from infancy to early childhood, early childhood to middle childhood, and middle childhood to adolescence. Although sleep problems in infancy, early childhood, and middle childhood were not directly related to adolescent working memory, sleep problems during adolescence were associated with poorer adolescent working memory. In turn, these deficits in working memory were related to greater risk taking in late adolescence. In summary, the present results suggest that sleep problems in earlier periods are indicative of risk for sleep problems later in development, but that sleep problems in adolescence contribute uniquely to deficits in working memory that, in turn, lead to risky behavior during late adolescence.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Geary, David C.; Hoard, Mary K.; Byrd-Craven, Jennifer; DeSoto, M. Catherine
2004-01-01
Groups of first-grade (mean age = 82 months), third-grade (mean age = 107 months), and fifth-grade (mean age = 131 months) children with a learning disability in mathematics (MD, n=58) and their normally achieving peers (n = 91) were administered tasks that assessed their knowledge of counting principles, working memory, and the strategies used to…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tharp, Ian J.; Pickering, Alan D.
2009-01-01
DeCaro et al. [DeCaro, M. S., Thomas, R. D., & Beilock, S. L. (2008). "Individual differences in category learning: Sometimes less working memory capacity is better than more." "Cognition, 107"(1), 284-294] explored how individual differences in working memory capacity differentially mediate the learning of distinct category structures.…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
MacQueen, David A.; Dalrymple, Savannah R.; Drobes, David J.; Diamond, David M.
2016-01-01
Developed as a tool to assess working memory capacity in rodents, the odor span task (OST) has significant potential to advance drug discovery in animal models of psychiatric disorders. Prior investigations indicate OST performance is impaired by systemic administration of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDA-r) antagonists and is sensitive to…
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zhou, Huixia; Rossi, Sonja; Li, Juan; Liu, Huanhuan; Chen, Ran; Chen, Baoguo
2017-01-01
By using the eye-tracking method, the present study explores whether working memory capacity assessed via the second language (L2) reading span (L2WMC) as well as the operational span task (OSPAN) affects the processing of subject-extraction and object-extraction in Chinese-English bilinguals. Results showed that L2WMC has no effects on the…
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Ageing and feature binding in visual working memory: The role of presentation time.
Rhodes, Stephen; Parra, Mario A; Logie, Robert H
2016-01-01
A large body of research has clearly demonstrated that healthy ageing is accompanied by an associative memory deficit. Older adults exhibit disproportionately poor performance on memory tasks requiring the retention of associations between items (e.g., pairs of unrelated words). In contrast to this robust deficit, older adults' ability to form and temporarily hold bound representations of an object's surface features, such as colour and shape, appears to be relatively well preserved. However, the findings of one set of experiments suggest that older adults may struggle to form temporary bound representations in visual working memory when given more time to study objects. However, these findings were based on between-participant comparisons across experimental paradigms. The present study directly assesses the role of presentation time in the ability of younger and older adults to bind shape and colour in visual working memory using a within-participant design. We report new evidence that giving older adults longer to study memory objects does not differentially affect their immediate memory for feature combinations relative to individual features. This is in line with a growing body of research suggesting that there is no age-related impairment in immediate memory for colour-shape binding.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tam, Helen; Jarrold, Christopher; Baddeley, Alan D.; Sabatos-DeVito, Maura
2010-01-01
Past research suggests that children begin to phonologically rehearse at around 7 years of age. Less is known regarding the development of refreshment, an attention-based maintenance mechanism. Therefore, the use of these two maintenance methods by 6- and 8-year-olds was assessed using memory span tasks that varied in their opportunities for…
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Reliability and Validity of Ambulatory Cognitive Assessments
Sliwinski, Martin J.; Mogle, Jacqueline A.; Hyun, Jinshil; Munoz, Elizabeth; Smyth, Joshua M.; Lipton, Richard B.
2017-01-01
Mobile technologies are increasingly used to measure cognitive function outside of traditional clinic and laboratory settings. Although ambulatory assessments of cognitive function conducted in people’s natural environments offer potential advantages over traditional assessment approaches, the psychometrics of cognitive assessment procedures have been understudied. We evaluated the reliability and construct validity of ambulatory assessments of working memory and perceptual speed administered via smartphones as part of an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol in a diverse adult sample (N=219). Results indicated excellent between-person reliability (≥.97) for average scores, and evidence of reliable within-person variability across measurement occasions (.41–.53). The ambulatory tasks also exhibited construct validity, as evidence by their loadings on working memory and perceptual speed factors defined by the in-lab assessments. Our findings demonstrate that averaging across brief cognitive assessments made in uncontrolled naturalistic settings provide measurements that are comparable in reliability to assessments made in controlled laboratory environments. PMID:27084835
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Chang, L; Løhaugen, G C; Douet, V; Miller, E N; Skranes, J; Ernst, T
2016-02-02
Potent combined antiretroviral therapy decreased the incidence and severity of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND); however, no specific effective pharmacotherapy exists for HAND. Patients with HIV commonly have deficits in working memory and attention, which may negatively impact many other cognitive domains, leading to HAND. Since HAND may lead to loss of independence in activities of daily living and negative emotional well-being, and incur a high economic burden, effective treatments for HAND are urgently needed. This study aims to determine whether adaptive working memory training might improve cognitive functions and neural network efficiency and possibly decrease neuroinflammation. This study also aims to assess whether subjects with the LMX1A-rs4657412 TT(AA) genotype show greater training effects from working memory training than TC(AG) or CC(GG)-carriers. 60 HIV-infected and 60 seronegative control participants will be randomized to a double-blind active-controlled study, using adaptive versus non-adaptive Cogmed Working Memory Training® (CWMT), 20-25 sessions over 5-8 weeks. Each subject will be assessed with near- and far-transfer cognitive tasks, self-reported mood and executive function questionnaires, and blood-oxygenation level-dependent functional MRI during working memory (n-back) and visual attention (ball tracking) tasks, at baseline, 1-month, and 6-months after CWMT. Furthermore, genotyping for LMX1A-rs4657412 will be performed to identify whether subjects with the TT(AA)-genotype show greater gain or neural efficiency after CWMT than those with other genotypes. Lastly, cerebrospinal fluid will be obtained before and after CWMT to explore changes in levels of inflammatory proteins (cytokines and chemokines) and monoamines. Improving working memory in HIV patients, using CWMT, might slow the progression or delay the onset of HAND. Observation of decreased brain activation or normalized neural networks, using fMRI, after CWMT would lead to a better understanding of how neural networks are modulated by CWMT. Moreover, validating the greater training gain in subjects with the LMX1A-TT(AA) genotype could lead to a personalized approach for future working memory training studies. Demonstrating and understanding the neural correlates of the efficacy of CWMT in HIV patients could lead to a safe adjunctive therapy for HAND, and possibly other brain disorders. ClinicalTrial.gov, NCT02602418.
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Nyberg, Lars; Karalija, Nina; Salami, Alireza; Andersson, Micael; Wåhlin, Anders; Kaboovand, Neda; Köhncke, Ylva; Axelsson, Jan; Rieckmann, Anna; Papenberg, Goran; Garrett, Douglas D.; Riklund, Katrine; Lövdén, Martin; Bäckman, Lars
2016-01-01
D1 and D2 dopamine receptors (D1DRs and D2DRs) may contribute differently to various aspects of memory and cognition. The D1DR system has been linked to functions supported by the prefrontal cortex. By contrast, the role of the D2DR system is less clear, although it has been hypothesized that D2DRs make a specific contribution to hippocampus-based cognitive functions. Here we present results from 181 healthy adults between 64 and 68 y of age who underwent comprehensive assessment of episodic memory, working memory, and processing speed, along with MRI and D2DR assessment with [11C]raclopride and PET. Caudate D2DR availability was positively associated with episodic memory but not with working memory or speed. Whole-brain analyses further revealed a relation between hippocampal D2DR availability and episodic memory. Hippocampal and caudate D2DR availability were interrelated, and functional MRI-based resting-state functional connectivity between the ventral caudate and medial temporal cortex increased as a function of caudate D2DR availability. Collectively, these findings indicate that D2DRs make a specific contribution to hippocampus-based cognition by influencing striatal and hippocampal regions, and their interactions. PMID:27339132
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Smith, Sherri L.; Pichora-Fuller, M. Kathleen
2015-01-01
Listeners with hearing loss commonly report having difficulty understanding speech, particularly in noisy environments. Their difficulties could be due to auditory and cognitive processing problems. Performance on speech-in-noise tests has been correlated with reading working memory span (RWMS), a measure often chosen to avoid the effects of hearing loss. If the goal is to assess the cognitive consequences of listeners’ auditory processing abilities, however, then listening working memory span (LWMS) could be a more informative measure. Some studies have examined the effects of different degrees and types of masking on working memory, but less is known about the demands placed on working memory depending on the linguistic complexity of the target speech or the task used to measure speech understanding in listeners with hearing loss. Compared to RWMS, LWMS measures using different speech targets and maskers may provide a more ecologically valid approach. To examine the contributions of RWMS and LWMS to speech understanding, we administered two working memory measures (a traditional RWMS measure and a new LWMS measure), and a battery of tests varying in the linguistic complexity of the speech materials, the presence of babble masking, and the task. Participants were a group of younger listeners with normal hearing and two groups of older listeners with hearing loss (n = 24 per group). There was a significant group difference and a wider range in performance on LWMS than on RWMS. There was a significant correlation between both working memory measures only for the oldest listeners with hearing loss. Notably, there were only few significant correlations among the working memory and speech understanding measures. These findings suggest that working memory measures reflect individual differences that are distinct from those tapped by these measures of speech understanding. PMID:26441769
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Sentence processing and verbal working memory in a white-matter-disconnection patient.
Meyer, Lars; Cunitz, Katrin; Obleser, Jonas; Friederici, Angela D
2014-08-01
The Arcuate Fasciculus/Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus (AF/SLF) is the white-matter bundle that connects posterior superior temporal and inferior frontal cortex. Its causal functional role in sentence processing and verbal working memory is currently under debate. While impairments of sentence processing and verbal working memory often co-occur in patients suffering from AF/SLF damage, it is unclear whether these impairments result from shared white-matter damage to the verbal-working-memory network. The present study sought to specify the behavioral consequences of focal AF/SLF damage for sentence processing and verbal working memory, which were assessed in a single patient suffering from a cleft-like lesion spanning the deep left superior temporal gyrus, sparing most surrounding gray matter. While tractography suggests that the ventral fronto-temporal white-matter bundle is intact in this patient, the AF/SLF was not visible to tractography. In line with the hypothesis that the AF/SLF is causally involved in sentence processing, the patient׳s performance was selectively impaired on sentences that jointly involve both complex word orders and long word-storage intervals. However, the patient was unimpaired on sentences that only involved long word-storage intervals without involving complex word orders. On the contrary, the patient performed generally worse than a control group across standard verbal-working-memory tests. We conclude that the AF/SLF not only plays a causal role in sentence processing, linking regions of the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus to the temporo-parietal region, but moreover plays a crucial role in verbal working memory, linking regions of the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus to the left temporo-parietal region. Together, the specific sentence-processing impairment and the more general verbal-working-memory impairment may imply that the AF/SLF subserves both sentence processing and verbal working memory, possibly pointing to the AF and SLF respectively supporting each. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Poletti, Barbara; Carelli, Laura; Solca, Federica; Lafronza, Annalisa; Pedroli, Elisa; Faini, Andrea; Zago, Stefano; Ticozzi, Nicola; Ciammola, Andrea; Morelli, Claudia; Meriggi, Paolo; Cipresso, Pietro; Lulé, Dorothée; Ludolph, Albert C; Riva, Giuseppe; Silani, Vincenzo
2017-04-01
Traditional cognitive assessment in neurological conditions involving physical disability is often prevented by the presence of verbal-motor impairment; to date, an extensive motor-verbal-free neuropsychological battery is not available for such purposes. We adapted a set of neuropsychological tests, assessing language, attentional abilities, executive functions and social cognition, for eye-tracking (ET) control, and explored its feasibility in a sample of healthy participants. Thirty healthy subjects performed a neuropsychological assessment, using an ET-based neuropsychological battery, together with standard "paper and pencil" cognitive measures for frontal (Frontal Assessment Battery-FAB) and working memory abilities (Digit Sequencing Task) and for global cognitive efficiency (Montreal Cognitive Assessment-MoCA). Psychological measures of anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y-STAI-Y) and depression (Beck Depression Inventory-BDI) were also collected, and a usability questionnaire was administered. Significant correlations were observed between the "paper and pencil" screening of working memory abilities and the ET-based neuropsychological measures. The ET-based battery also correlated with the MoCA, while poor correlations were observed with the FAB. Usability aspects were found to be influenced by both working memory abilities and psychological components. The ET-based neuropsychological battery developed could provide an extensive assessment of cognitive functions, allowing participants to perform tasks independently from the integrity of motor or verbal channels. Further studies will be aimed at investigating validity and usability components in neurological populations with motor-verbal impairments.
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[Trajectories of aging in a sample of elderly people: a longitudinal study].
Navarro-González, Elena; Calero, María Dolores; Becerra-Reina, Dolores
2015-01-01
The present study analyzes variables associated with different trajectories of aging, and the level of cognitive functioning in a sample of older adults. Although this work is part of a broader investigation where initially 141 people were assessed, this paper only discusses the cognitive functioning and cognitive development of 64 older people who have been followed up four years after the initial assessment, with a mean age of 83.84 years (age range 65 to 99 years). In the initial assessment all the participants were assessed with a psychological battery that included the MEC, the verbal fluency task FVS, a sustained attention task, a working memory test, a Quality of Life Questionnaire, a scale of dependency, and the AVLT-Learning Potential test. In the follow up assessment, participants have been assessed with the MEC, the verbal fluency task FVS, and the verbal memory test AVLT-PA. the results show relatively stable trajectories of aging and that the variables that better predict cognitive evolution of the elderly are working memory and post-test score in the AVLT-LP. Despite the time lapse between the two assessments and the age of the participants, older adults have remained relatively stable in their cognitive functioning, which in part contradicts the idea that--especially after 80 years--a general decline of cognitive functioning occurs in old age. Copyright © 2014 SEGG. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.
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Saunders, Nichole L J; Summers, Mathew J
2011-03-01
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has emerged as a classification for a prodromal phase of cognitive decline that may precede the emergence of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recent research suggests that attention, executive, and working memory deficits may appear much earlier in the progression of AD than traditionally conceptualized, and may be more consistently associated with the later development of AD than memory processing deficits. The present study longitudinally tracked attention, executive and working memory functions in subtypes of MCI. In a longitudinal study, 52 amnestic MCI (a-MCI), 29 nonamnestic MCI (na-MCI), and 25 age- and education-matched controls undertook neuropsychological assessment of visual and verbal memory, attentional processing, executive functioning, working memory capacity, and semantic language at 10 month intervals. Analysis by repeated measures ANOVA indicate that the a-MCI and na-MCI groups displayed a decline in simple sustained attention (ηp² = .054) with a significant decline on a task of divided attention (ηp² = .053) being evident in the a-MCI group. Stable deficits were found on other measures of attention, working memory and executive function in the a-MCI and na-MCI groups. The a-MCI group displayed stable impairments to visual and verbal memory. The results indicate that a-MCI and na-MCI display a stable pattern of deficits to attention, working memory, and executive function. The decline in simple sustained attention in a-MCI and n-MCI groups and to divided attention in a-MCI may be early indicators of possible transition to dementia from MCI. However, further research is required to determine this. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved
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Yuan, Weihong; Dudley, Jonathan; Barber Foss, Kim D; Ellis, Jonathan D; Thomas, Staci; Galloway, Ryan T; DiCesare, Christopher A; Leach, James L; Adams, Janet; Maloney, Thomas; Gadd, Brooke; Smith, David; Epstein, Jeff N; Grooms, Dustin R; Logan, Kelsey; Howell, David R; Altaye, Mekibib; Myer, Gregory D
2018-06-01
Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested that repetitive subconcussive head impacts, even after only one sport season, may lead to pre- to post-season structural and functional alterations in male high school football athletes. However, data on female athletes are limited. In the current investigation, we aimed to (1) assess the longitudinal pre- to post-season changes in functional MRI (fMRI) of working memory and working memory performance, (2) quantify the association between the pre- to post-season change in fMRI of working memory and the exposure to head impact and working memory performance, and (3) assess whether wearing a neck collar designed to reduce intracranial slosh via mild compression of the jugular veins can ameliorate the changes in fMRI brain activation observed in the female high school athletes who did not wear collars after a full soccer season. A total of 48 female high school soccer athletes (age range: 14.00-17.97 years) were included in the study. These athletes were assigned to the non-collar group (n = 21) or to the collar group (n = 27). All athletes undewent MRI at both pre-season and post-season. In each session, a fMRI verbal N-Back task was used to engage working memory. A significant pre- to post-season increase in fMRI blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal was demonstrated when performing the N-back working memory task in the non-collar group but not in the collar group, despite the comparable exposure to head impacts during the season between the two groups. The collar group demonstrated significantly smaller pre- to post-season change in fMRI BOLD signal than the non-collar group, suggesting a potential protective effect from the collar device. Significant correlations were also found between the pre- to post-season increase in fMRI brain activation and the decrease in task accuracy in the non-collar group, indicating an association between the compensatory mechanism in underlying neurophysiology and the alteration in the behavioral outcomes.
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Dietary self-control influences top-down guidance of attention to food cues.
Higgs, Suzanne; Dolmans, Dirk; Humphreys, Glyn W; Rutters, Femke
2015-01-01
Motivational objects attract attention due to their rewarding properties, but less is known about the role that top-down cognitive processes play in the attention paid to motivationally relevant objects and how this is affected by relevant behavioral traits. Here we assess how thinking about food affects attentional guidance to food items and how this is modulated by traits relating to dietary self-control. Participants completed two tasks in which they were presented with an initial cue (food or non-food) to either hold in working memory (memory task) or to merely attend to (priming task). Holding food items in working memory strongly affected attention when the memorized cue re-appeared in the search display. Tendency towards disinhibited eating was associated with greater attention to food versus non-food pictures in both the priming and working memory tasks, consistent with greater attention to food cues per se. Successful dieters, defined as those high in dietary restraint and low in tendency to disinhibition, showed reduced attention to food when holding food-related information in working memory. These data suggest a strong top-down effect of thinking about food on attention to food items and indicate that the suppression of food items in working memory could be a marker of dieting success.
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Parental Perceptions of the Efficacy of Cogmed Working Memory Training.
Graham, Alan R; Benninger, William B
2016-01-01
Many articles have been written about the effectiveness of Cogmed Working Memory Training (CWMT). As Cogmed licensees, we have provided CWMT to more than 350 trainees and have collected pre- and post-training assessment data and parental feedback from about 280 child and adolescent trainees and their parents. On all nine measures of working memory and other selected executive functions, we have found statistically significant improvement. We also offer many of the comments and feedback that we have received from families about the changes they have experienced. There are limitations to the one group pre-test post-test design used in this study that need to be considered as the results are reviewed.
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Armeni, Eleni; Apostolakis, Michail; Christidi, Foteini; Rizos, Demetrios; Kaparos, George; Panoulis, Konstantinos; Augoulea, Areti; Alexandrou, Andreas; Karopoulou, Evangelia; Zalonis, Ioannis; Triantafyllou, Nikolaos; Lambrinoudaki, Irene
2018-02-01
The changing hormonal milieu during the menopausal transition may contribute to the development of memory disorders. We aimed to assess the association of sex hormones with memory function in a sample of Greek middle-aged women. This pilot study included 44 women with subjective memory complaints. Memory performance was evaluated using the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT), the Brief Visuospatial Memory test (BVMT), and the verbal digits backwards test (VSPAN), to assess verbal, visuospatial, and working memory performance, respectively. Menopausal symptoms were assessed using the Green Climacteric Scale. VSPAN backwards scores were positively associated with log-transformed free androgen index (logFAI), in models adjusted for age, education, log-transformed free estrogen index (logFEI), hypertension, and the intensity of menopausal symptoms. BVMT total scores were predicted by logFAI (b-coefficient = 0.424, p value = 0.002), education, and combined climacteric symptomatology, in a model adjusted for age, logFEI, and hypertension. Women with circulating estradiol above the median value of 10 pg/mL had better total HTLV total scores compared to women with estradiol values below the median (HTLV total scores, estradiol ≤ 10 pg/mL vs. > 10 pg/mL: 24.2 ± 3.6 vs. 30.0 ± 7.9, p value = 0.007 unadjusted). This association was affected by education and remained independent of menopausal symptoms and testosterone levels, education, and hypertension (model R 2 = 22.3%; b-coefficient = 0.318, p value = 0.024). Endogenous total estradiol is associated with verbal episodic memory, while logFAI is associated with working memory performance and visuospatial episodic memory in this sample of postmenopausal women. These associations were not influenced by age, education, or menopausal symptoms. Larger studies are necessary to evaluate the significance of our findings.
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Do transactive memory and participative teamwork improve nurses' quality of work life?
Brunault, Paul; Fouquereau, Evelyne; Colombat, Philippe; Gillet, Nicolas; El-Hage, Wissam; Camus, Vincent; Gaillard, Philippe
2014-03-01
Improvement in nurses' quality of work life (QWL) has become a major issue in health care organizations. We hypothesized that the level of transactive memory (defined as the way groups collectively encode, store, and retrieve knowledge) and participative teamwork (an organizational model of care based on vocational training, a specific service's care project, and regular interdisciplinary staffing) positively affect nurses' QWL. This cross-sectional study enrolled 84 ward-based psychiatric nurses. We assessed transactive memory, participative teamwork, perceived organizational justice, perceived organizational support, and QWL using psychometrically reliable and valid scales. Participative teamwork and transactive memory were positively associated with nurses' QWL. Perceived organizational support and organizational justice fully mediated the relationship between participative teamwork and QWL, but not between transactive memory and QWL. Improved transactive memory could directly improve nurses' QWL. Improved participative teamwork could improve nurses' QWL through better perceived organizational support and perceived organizational justice.
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Hobbs, Malcolm; Higham, Philip A; Kneller, Wendy
2014-06-01
The current study tested whether undersea divers are able to accurately judge their level of memory impairment from inert gas narcosis. Inert gas narcosis causes a number of cognitive impairments, including a decrement in memory ability. Undersea divers may be unable to accurately judge their level of impairment, affecting safety and work performance. In two underwater field experiments, performance decrements on tests of memory at 33 to 42 m were compared with self-ratings of impairment and resolution. The effect of depth (shallow [I-II m] vs. deep [33-42 m]) was measured on free-recall (Experiment I; n = 41) and cued-recall (Experiment 2; n = 39) performance, a visual-analogue self-assessment rating of narcotic impairment, and the accuracy of judgements-of-learning JOLs). Both free- and cued-recall were significantly reduced in deep, compared to shallow, conditions. This decrement was accompanied by an increase in self-assessed impairment. In contrast, resolution (based on JOLs) remained unaffected by depth. The dissociation of memory accuracy and resolution, coupled with a shift in a self-assessment of impairment, indicated that divers were able to accurately judge their decrease in memory performance at depth. These findings suggest that impaired self-assessment and resolution may not actually be a symptom of narcosis in the depth range of 33 to 42 m underwater and that the divers in this study were better equipped to manage narcosis than prior literature suggested. The results are discussed in relation to implications for diver safety and work performance.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Marini, Andrea; Ruffino, Milena; Sali, Maria Enrica; Molteni, Massimo
2017-01-01
Purpose: This follow-up study assessed (a) the influence of phonological working memory (pWM), home literacy environment, and a family history of linguistic impairments in late talkers (LTs); (b) the diagnostic accuracy of a task of nonword repetition (NWR) in identifying LTs; and (c) the persistence of lexical weaknesses after 10 months. Method:…
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Zhu, Frank F; Yeung, Andrew Y; Poolton, Jamie M; Lee, Tatia M C; Leung, Gilberto K K; Masters, Rich S W
2015-01-01
Implicit motor learning is characterized by low dependence on working memory and stable performance despite stress, fatigue, or multi-tasking. However, current paradigms for implicit motor learning are based on behavioral interventions that are often task-specific and limited when applied in practice. To investigate whether cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) area during motor learning suppressed working memory activity and reduced explicit verbal-analytical involvement in movement control, thereby promoting implicit motor learning. Twenty-seven healthy individuals practiced a golf putting task during a Training Phase while receiving either real cathodal tDCS stimulation over the left DLPFC area or sham stimulation. Their performance was assessed during a Test phase on another day. Verbal working memory capacity was assessed before and after the Training Phase, and before the Test Phase. Compared to sham stimulation, real stimulation suppressed verbal working memory activity after the Training Phase, but enhanced golf putting performance during the Training Phase and the Test Phase, especially when participants were required to multi-task. Cathodal tDCS over the left DLPFC may foster implicit motor learning and performance in complex real-life motor tasks that occur during sports, surgery or motor rehabilitation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Jang, Sung Ho; Kim, Seong Ho; Seo, Jeong Pyo
2018-01-01
We reported on a patient with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) who showed recovery of an injured cingulum concurrent with improvement of short-term memory, which was demonstrated on follow-up diffusion tensor tractography (DTT). A 55-year-old male patient suffered head trauma resulting from falling from approximately 2 m while working at a construction site. The patient showed mild memory impairment (especially short-term memory impairment) at 3 months after onset: Memory Assessment Scale (global memory: 95 (37%ile), short-term memory: 75 (5%ile), verbal memory: 80 (9%ile) and visual memory: 112 (79%ile)). By contrast, at 2 years after onset, his mild memory impairment had improved to a normal state: Memory Assessment Scale (global memory: 104 (61%ile), short-term memory: 95 (37%ile), verbal memory: 101 (53%ile) and visual memory: 106 (66%ile)). On 3-month DTT, discontinuation of the right anterior cingulum was observed over the genu of the corpus callosum, while on 2-year DTT, the discontinued right anterior cingulum was elongated to the right basal forebrain. In conclusion, recovery of an injured cingulum concurrent with improvement of short-term memory was demonstrated in a patient with mild TBI.
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Abu-Akel, A; Reniers, R L E P; Wood, S J
2016-09-01
Patients with schizophrenia show impairments in working-memory and visual-spatial processing, but little is known about the dynamic interplay between the two. To provide insight into this important question, we examined the effect of positive and negative symptom expressions in healthy adults on perceptual processing while concurrently performing a working-memory task that requires the allocations of various degrees of cognitive resources. The effect of positive and negative symptom expressions in healthy adults (N = 91) on perceptual processing was examined in a dual-task paradigm of visual-spatial working memory (VSWM) under three conditions of cognitive load: a baseline condition (with no concurrent working-memory demand), a low VSWM load condition, and a high VSWM load condition. Participants overall performed more efficiently (i.e., faster) with increasing cognitive load. This facilitation in performance was unrelated to symptom expressions. However, participants with high-negative, low-positive symptom expressions were less accurate in the low VSWM condition compared to the baseline and the high VSWM load conditions. Attenuated, subclinical expressions of psychosis affect cognitive performance that is impaired in schizophrenia. The "resource limitations hypothesis" may explain the performance of the participants with high-negative symptom expressions. The dual-task of visual-spatial processing and working memory may be beneficial to assessing the cognitive phenotype of individuals with high risk for schizophrenia spectrum disorders.
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Retest effects in working memory capacity tests: A meta-analysis.
Scharfen, Jana; Jansen, Katrin; Holling, Heinz
2018-06-15
The repeated administration of working memory capacity tests is common in clinical and research settings. For cognitive ability tests and different neuropsychological tests, meta-analyses have shown that they are prone to retest effects, which have to be accounted for when interpreting retest scores. Using a multilevel approach, this meta-analysis aims at showing the reproducibility of retest effects in working memory capacity tests for up to seven test administrations, and examines the impact of the length of the test-retest interval, test modality, equivalence of test forms and participant age on the size of retest effects. Furthermore, it is assessed whether the size of retest effects depends on the test paradigm. An extensive literature search revealed 234 effect sizes from 95 samples and 68 studies, in which healthy participants between 12 and 70 years repeatedly performed a working memory capacity test. Results yield a weighted average of g = 0.28 for retest effects from the first to the second test administration, and a significant increase in effect sizes was observed up to the fourth test administration. The length of the test-retest interval and publication year were found to moderate the size of retest effects. Retest effects differed between the paradigms of working memory capacity tests. These findings call for the development and use of appropriate experimental or statistical methods to address retest effects in working memory capacity tests.
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ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ford, Ruth M.; Driscoll, Timothy; Shum, David; Macaulay, Catrin E.
2012-01-01
In two studies, 4- to 6-year-olds were asked to name pictures of animals for the benefit of a watching hand puppet (the ongoing task) but to refrain from naming and to remove from view any pictures of dogs (the prospective memory [PM] task). Children also completed assessments of verbal ability, cognitive inhibition, working memory, and…
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MacQueen, David A; Dalrymple, Savannah R; Drobes, David J; Diamond, David M
2016-06-01
Developed as a tool to assess working memory capacity in rodents, the odor span task (OST) has significant potential to advance drug discovery in animal models of psychiatric disorders. Prior investigations indicate OST performance is impaired by systemic administration of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDA-r) antagonists and is sensitive to cholinergic manipulations. The present study sought to determine whether an impairment in OST performance can be produced by systemic administration of the competitive NMDA-r antagonist 3-(2-carboxypiperazin-4-yl)propyl-1-phosphonic acid (CPP; 3, 10, 17 mg/kg i.p.) in a unique dual-component variant of the OST, and whether this impairment is ameliorated by nicotine (0.75 mg/kg i.p.). Male Sprague-Dawley rats were trained to asymptotic level of performance on a 24-trial two-comparison incrementing nonmatching to sample OST. In addition, rats were administered a two-comparison olfactory reference memory (RM) task, which was integrated into the OST. The RM task provided an assessment of the effects of drug administration on global behavioral measures, long-term memory and motivation. Several measures of working memory (span, longest run, and accuracy) were dose dependently impaired by CPP without adversely affecting RM. Analysis of drug effects across trial blocks demonstrated a significant impairment of performance even at low memory loads, suggesting a CPP-induced deficit of olfactory short-term memory that is not load-dependent. Although nicotine did not ameliorate CPP-induced impairments in span or accuracy, it did block the impairment in longest run produced by the 10 mg/kg dose of CPP. Overall, our results indicate that performance in our 24 odor two-comparison OST is capacity dependent and that CPP impaired OST working, but not reference, memory. © 2016 MacQueen et al.; Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
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Hankosky, Emily R; Sherrill, Luke K; Ruvola, Lauren A; Haake, Rachel M; Kim, Taehyeon; Hammerslag, Lindsey R; Kougias, Daniel G; Juraska, Janice M; Gulley, Joshua M
2017-09-01
Normal aging results in cognitive decline and nutritional interventions have been suggested as potential approaches for mitigating these deficits. Here, we used rats to investigate the effects of short- and long-term dietary supplementation with the leucine metabolite β-hydroxy-β-methyl butyrate (HMB) on working memory and cognitive flexibility. Beginning ∼12 months of age, male and female Long-Evans rats were given twice daily access to sipper tubes containing calcium HMB (450 mg/kg) or vehicle (285 mg/kg calcium lactate) in a sucrose solution (20% w/v). Supplementation continued for 1 or 7 months (middle- and old-age (OA) groups, respectively) before testing began. Working memory was assessed by requiring rats to respond on a previously sampled lever following various delays. Cognitive flexibility was assessed by training rats to earn food according to a visual strategy and then, once acquired, shifting to an egocentric response strategy. Treatment with HMB improved working memory performance in middle-age (MA) males and OA rats of both sexes. In the cognitive flexibility task, there was a significant age-dependent deficit in acquisition of the visual strategy that was not apparent in OA males treated with HMB. Furthermore, HMB ameliorated an apparent deficit in visual strategy acquisition in MA females. Together, these findings suggest that daily nutritional supplementation with HMB facilitates learning and improves working memory performance. As such, HMB supplementation may mitigate age-related cognitive deficits and may therefore be an effective tool to combat this undesirable feature of the aging process.
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Piccardi, Laura; Matano, Alessandro; D'Antuono, Giovanni; Marin, Dario; Ciurli, Paola; Incoccia, Chiara; Verde, Paola; Guariglia, Paola
2016-01-01
The aim of the present study was to verify if gender differences in verbal and visuo-spatial working memory would persist following right cerebral lesions. To pursue our aim we investigated a large sample (n. 346) of right brain-damaged patients and healthy participants (n. 272) for the presence of gender effects in performing Corsi and Digit Test. We also assessed a subgroup of patients (n. 109) for the nature (active vs. passive) of working memory tasks. We tested working memory (WM) administering the Corsi Test (CBT) and the Digit Span (DS) using two different versions: forward (fCBT and fDS), subjects were required to repeat stimuli in the same order that they were presented; and backward (bCBT and bDS), subjects were required to repeat stimuli in the opposite order of presentation. In this way, passive storage and active processing of working memory were assessed. Our results showed the persistence of gender-related effects in spite of the presence of right brain lesions. We found that men outperformed women both in CBT and DS, regardless of active and passive processing of verbal and visuo-spatial stimuli. The presence of visuo-spatial disorders (i.e., hemineglect) can affect the performance on Corsi Test. In our sample, men and women were equally affected by hemineglect, therefore it did not mask the gender effect. Generally speaking, the persistence of the men's superiority in visuo-spatial tasks may be interpreted as a protective factor, at least for men, within other life factors such as level of education or kind of profession before retirement.
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Orban, Sarah A; Rapport, Mark D; Friedman, Lauren M; Eckrich, Samuel J; Kofler, Michael J
2018-05-01
Children with ADHD exhibit clinically impairing inattentive behavior during classroom instruction and in other cognitively demanding contexts. However, there have been surprisingly few attempts to validate anecdotal parent/teacher reports of intact sustained attention during 'preferred' activities such as watching movies. The current investigation addresses this omission, and provides an initial test of how ADHD-related working memory deficits contribute to inattentive behavior during classroom instruction. Boys ages 8-12 (M = 9.62, SD = 1.22) with ADHD (n = 32) and typically developing boys (TD; n = 30) completed a counterbalanced series of working memory tests and watched two videos on separate assessment days: an analogue math instructional video, and a non-instructional video selected to match the content and cognitive demands of parent/teacher-described 'preferred' activities. Objective, reliable observations of attentive behavior revealed no between-group differences during the non-instructional video (d = -0.02), and attentive behavior during the non-instructional video was unrelated to all working memory variables (r = -0.11 to 0.19, ns). In contrast, the ADHD group showed disproportionate attentive behavior decrements during analogue classroom instruction (d = -0.71). Bias-corrected, bootstrapped, serial mediation revealed that 59% of this between-group difference was attributable to ADHD-related impairments in central executive working memory, both directly (ER = 41%) and indirectly via its role in coordinating phonological short-term memory (ER = 15%). Between-group attentive behavior differences were no longer detectable after accounting for ADHD-related working memory impairments (d = -0.29, ns). Results confirm anecdotal reports of intact sustained attention during activities that place minimal demands on working memory, and indicate that ADHD children's inattention during analogue classroom instruction is related, in large part, to their underdeveloped working memory abilities.
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Kozora, E; Uluğ, A M; Erkan, D; Vo, A; Filley, C M; Ramon, G; Burleson, A; Zimmerman, R; Lockshin, M D
2016-11-01
Standardized cognitive tests and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients demonstrate deficits in working memory and executive function. These neurobehavioral abnormalities are not well studied in antiphospholipid syndrome, which may occur independently of or together with SLE. This study compares an fMRI paradigm involving motor skills, working memory, and executive function in SLE patients without antiphospholipid antibody (aPL) (the SLE group), aPL-positive non-SLE patients (the aPL-positive group), and controls. Brain MRI, fMRI, and standardized cognitive assessment results were obtained from 20 SLE, 20 aPL-positive, and 10 healthy female subjects with no history of neuropsychiatric abnormality. Analysis of fMRI data showed no differences in performance across groups on bilateral motor tasks. When analysis of variance was used, significant group differences were found in 2 executive function tasks (word generation and word rhyming) and in a working memory task (N-Back). Patients positive for aPL demonstrated higher activation in bilateral frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices compared to controls during working memory and executive function tasks. SLE patients also demonstrated bilateral frontal and temporal activation during working memory and executive function tasks. Compared to controls, both aPL-positive and SLE patients had elevated cortical activation, primarily in the frontal lobes, during tasks involving working memory and executive function. These findings are consistent with cortical overactivation as a compensatory mechanism for early white matter neuropathology in these disorders. © 2016, American College of Rheumatology.
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Klekociuk, Shannon Z; Summers, Mathew J
2014-03-01
Research suggests that working memory and attention deficits may be present in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, the functional status of these domains within revised MCI subtypes remains unclear, particularly because previous studies have examined these cognitive domains with the same tests that were used to classify MCI subtypes. The aim of this study was to examine working memory and attention function in MCI subtypes on a battery of neuropsychological tests that were distinct from those used to classify MCI subtypes A total of 122 adults aged 60-90 years were classified at baseline as amnestic MCI, non-amnestic MCI, and multi-domain amnestic (a-MCI+). The attentional and working memory capacity of participants was examined using a battery of tests distinct from those used to classify MCI at screening. The a-MCI+ group demonstrated the poorest performance on all working memory tasks and specific sub-processes of attention. The non-amnestic MCI group had lowered performance on visual span and complex sustained attention only. There was no evidence of either attentional or working memory impairment in the amnestic MCI participants. When MCI cohorts are assessed on measures distinct from those used at classification, a-MCI+ subjects had the most compromised working memory and attention function. These results support previous findings that suggest a-MCI+ more closely resembles early stage Alzheimer's disease and those with a-MCI+ may be at increased rate of future cognitive decline compared to those with other MCI subtypes. © 2014 The Authors. Psychogeriatrics © 2014 Japanese Psychogeriatric Society.
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Broster, Lucas S; Jenkins, Shonna L; Holmes, Sarah D; Jicha, Gregory A.; Jiang, Yang
2018-01-01
Emotional enhancement effects on memory have been reported to mitigate the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, relative to their manifestation in persons without pathologic aging, these effects may be reduced in magnitude or even deleterious, especially in tasks that more closely model ecologic memory performance. Based upon a synthesis of such reports, we hypothesized that in persons with AD low arousal positive stimuli would evoke relatively intact emotional enhancement effects, but that high arousal negative stimuli would evoke disordered emotional enhancement effects. To assess this, participants with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) presumed to be due to AD performed an emotionally-valenced short-term memory task while encephalography was recorded. Results indicated that for persons with MCI, high arousal negative stimuli led to working memory processing patterns previously associated with MCI presumed due to AD and dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. In contrast, low arousal positive stimuli evoked a processing pattern similar to MCI participants’ unaffected spouses. Our current findings suggest that low arousal positive stimuli attenuate working memory deficits of MCI due to Alzheimer’s disease. PMID:29060938
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Markett, Sebastian; Reuter, Martin; Heeren, Behrend; Lachmann, Bernd; Weber, Bernd; Montag, Christian
2018-02-01
The functional connectome represents a comprehensive network map of functional connectivity throughout the human brain. To date, the relationship between the organization of functional connectivity and cognitive performance measures is still poorly understood. In the present study we use resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to explore the link between the functional connectome and working memory capacity in an individual differences design. Working memory capacity, which refers to the maximum amount of context information that an individual can retain in the absence of external stimulation, was assessed outside the MRI scanner and estimated based on behavioral data from a change detection task. Resting-state time series were analyzed by means of voxelwise degree and eigenvector centrality mapping, which are data-driven network analytic approaches for the characterization of functional connectivity. We found working memory capacity to be inversely correlated with both centrality in the right intraparietal sulcus. Exploratory analyses revealed that this relationship was putatively driven by an increase in negative connectivity strength of the structure. This resting-state connectivity finding fits previous task based activation studies that have shown that this area responds to manipulations of working memory load.
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Individual differences in language and working memory affect children's speech recognition in noise.
McCreery, Ryan W; Spratford, Meredith; Kirby, Benjamin; Brennan, Marc
2017-05-01
We examined how cognitive and linguistic skills affect speech recognition in noise for children with normal hearing. Children with better working memory and language abilities were expected to have better speech recognition in noise than peers with poorer skills in these domains. As part of a prospective, cross-sectional study, children with normal hearing completed speech recognition in noise for three types of stimuli: (1) monosyllabic words, (2) syntactically correct but semantically anomalous sentences and (3) semantically and syntactically anomalous word sequences. Measures of vocabulary, syntax and working memory were used to predict individual differences in speech recognition in noise. Ninety-six children with normal hearing, who were between 5 and 12 years of age. Higher working memory was associated with better speech recognition in noise for all three stimulus types. Higher vocabulary abilities were associated with better recognition in noise for sentences and word sequences, but not for words. Working memory and language both influence children's speech recognition in noise, but the relationships vary across types of stimuli. These findings suggest that clinical assessment of speech recognition is likely to reflect underlying cognitive and linguistic abilities, in addition to a child's auditory skills, consistent with the Ease of Language Understanding model.
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Khurana, Atika; Romer, Daniel; Betancourt, Laura M.; Brodsky, Nancy L.; Giannetta, Joan M.; Hurt, Hallam
2013-01-01
Although deficits in working memory ability have been implicated in suboptimal decision making and risk taking among adolescents, its influence on early sexual initiation has so far not been examined. Analyzing 2 waves of panel data from a community sample of adolescents (N = 347; Mean age[baseline] = 13.4 years), assessed 1 year apart, the present study tested the hypothesis that weak working memory ability predicts early sexual initiation and explored whether this relationship is mediated by sensation seeking and 2 forms of impulsivity, namely acting-without-thinking and temporal discounting. The 2 forms of impulsivity were expected to be positively associated with early sexual initiation, whereas sensation seeking was hypothesized to be unrelated or to have a protective influence, due to its positive association with working memory. Results obtained from structural equation modeling procedures supported these predictions and in addition showed that the effects of 3 prominent risk factors (Black racial identity, low socioeconomic background, and early pubertal maturation) on early sexual initiation were entirely mediated by working memory and impulsivity. The findings are discussed in regard to their implications for preventing early sexual onset among adolescents. PMID:22369334
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Working memory dysfunctions predict social problem solving skills in schizophrenia.
Huang, Jia; Tan, Shu-ping; Walsh, Sarah C; Spriggens, Lauren K; Neumann, David L; Shum, David H K; Chan, Raymond C K
2014-12-15
The current study aimed to examine the contribution of neurocognition and social cognition to components of social problem solving. Sixty-seven inpatients with schizophrenia and 31 healthy controls were administrated batteries of neurocognitive tests, emotion perception tests, and the Chinese Assessment of Interpersonal Problem Solving Skills (CAIPSS). MANOVAs were conducted to investigate the domains in which patients with schizophrenia showed impairments. Correlations were used to determine which impaired domains were associated with social problem solving, and multiple regression analyses were conducted to compare the relative contribution of neurocognitive and social cognitive functioning to components of social problem solving. Compared with healthy controls, patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse in sustained attention, working memory, negative emotion, intention identification and all components of the CAIPSS. Specifically, sustained attention, working memory and negative emotion identification were found to correlate with social problem solving and 1-back accuracy significantly predicted the poor performance in social problem solving. Among the dysfunctions in schizophrenia, working memory contributed most to deficits in social problem solving in patients with schizophrenia. This finding provides support for targeting working memory in the development of future social problem solving rehabilitation interventions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Erickson, Kirk I.; Banducci, Sarah E.; Weinstein, Andrea M.; MacDonald, Angus W.; Ferrell, Robert E.; Halder, Indrani; Flory, Janine D.; Manuck, Stephen B.
2014-01-01
Physical activity enhances cognitive performance, yet individual variability in its effectiveness limits its widespread therapeutic application. Genetic differences might be one source of this variation. For example, carriers of the methionine-specifying (Met) allele of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met polymorphism have reduced secretion of BDNF and poorer memory, yet physical activity increases BDNF levels. To determine whether the BDNF polymorphism moderated an association of physical activity with cognitive functioning among 1,032 midlife volunteers (mean age = 44.59 years), we evaluated participants’ performance on a battery of tests assessing memory, learning, and executive processes, and evaluated their physical activity with the Paffenbarger Physical Activity Questionnaire. BDNF genotype interacted robustly with physical activity to affect working memory, but not other areas of cognitive functioning. In particular, greater levels of physical activity offset a deleterious effect of the Met allele on working memory performance. These findings suggest that physical activity can modulate domain-specific genetic (BDNF) effects on cognition. PMID:23907543
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Duda, Weronika; Wesierska, Malgorzata; Ostaszewski, Pawel; Vales, Karel; Nekovarova, Tereza; Stuchlik, Ales
2016-09-15
N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) play a crucial role in spatial memory formation. In neuropharmacological studies their functioning strongly depends on testing conditions and the dosage of NMDAR antagonists. The aim of this study was to assess the immediate effects of NMDAR block by (+)MK-801 or memantine on short-term allothetic memory. Memory was tested in a working memory version of the Morris water maze test. In our version of the test, rats underwent one day of training with 8 trials, and then three experimental days when rats were injected intraperitoneally with low- 5 (MeL), high - 20 (MeH) mg/kg memantine, 0.1mg/kg MK-801 or 1ml/kg saline (SAL) 30min before testing, for three consecutive days. On each experimental day there was just one acquisition and one test trial, with an inter-trial interval of 5 or 15min. During training the hidden platform was relocated after each trial and during the experiment after each day. The follow-up effect was assessed on day 9. Intact rats improved their spatial memory across the one training day. With a 5min interval MeH rats had longer latency then all rats during retrieval. With a 15min interval the MeH rats presented worse working memory measured as retrieval minus acquisition trial for path than SAL and MeL and for latency than MeL rats. MK-801 rats had longer latency than SAL during retrieval. Thus, the high dose of memantine, contrary to low dose of MK-801 disrupts short-term memory independent on the time interval between acquisition and retrieval. This shows that short-term memory tested in a working memory version of water maze is sensitive to several parameters: i.e., NMDA receptor antagonist type, dosage and the time interval between learning and testing. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.
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Sleep and Cognitive Function in Multiple Sclerosis.
Braley, Tiffany J; Kratz, Anna L; Kaplish, Neeraj; Chervin, Ronald D
2016-08-01
To examine associations between cognitive performance and polysomnographic measures of obstructive sleep apnea in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Participants underwent a comprehensive MS-specific cognitive testing battery (the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in MS, or MACFIMS) and in-laboratory overnight PSG. In adjusted linear regression models, the oxygen desaturation index (ODI) and minimum oxygen saturation (MinO2) were significantly associated with performance on multiple MACFIMS measures, including the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT; 2-sec and 3-sec versions), which assesses working memory, processing speed, and attention, and on the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised, a test of delayed visual memory. The respiratory disturbance index (RDI) was also significantly associated with PASAT-3 scores as well as the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II) Discriminability Index, a test of verbal memory and response inhibition. Among these associations, apnea severity measures accounted for between 12% and 23% of the variance in cognitive test performance. Polysomnographic measures of sleep fragmentation (as reflected by the total arousal index) and total sleep time also showed significant associations with a component of the CVLT-II that assesses response inhibition, explaining 18% and 27% of the variance in performance. Among patients with MS, obstructive sleep apnea and sleep disturbance are significantly associated with diminished visual memory, verbal memory, executive function (as reflected by response inhibition), attention, processing speed, and working memory. If sleep disorders degrade these cognitive functions, effective treatment could offer new opportunities to improve cognitive functioning in patients with MS. A commentary on this article appears in this issue on page 1489. © 2016 Associated Professional Sleep Societies, LLC.
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Van Rooijen, Maaike; Verhoeven, Ludo; Steenbergen, Bert
2016-01-01
Early numeracy is an important precursor for arithmetic performance, academic proficiency, and work success. Besides their apparent motor difficulties, children with cerebral palsy (CP) often show additional cognitive disturbances. In this study, we examine whether working memory, non-verbal intelligence, linguistic skills, counting and fine motor skills are positively related to the early numeracy performance of 6-year-old children with CP. A total of 56 children (M = 6.0, SD = 0.61, 37 boys) from Dutch special education schools participated in this cross-sectional study. Of the total group, 81% of the children have the spastic type of CP (33% unilateral and 66% bilateral), 9% have been diagnosed as having diskinetic CP, 8% have been diagnosed as having spastic and diskinetic CP and 2% have been diagnosed as having a combination of diskinetic and atactic CP. The children completed standardized tests assessing early numeracy performance, working memory, non-verbal intelligence, sentence understanding and fine motor skills. In addition, an experimental task was administered to examine their basic counting performance. Structural equation modeling showed that working memory and fine motor skills were significantly related to the early numeracy performance of the children (β = .79 and p < .001, β = .41 and p < .001, respectively). Furthermore, counting was a mediating variable between working memory and early numeracy (β = .57, p < .001). Together, these findings highlight the importance of working memory for early numeracy performance in children with CP and they warrant further research into the efficacy of intervention programs aimed at working memory training.
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Noordermeer, Siri D. S.; Luman, Marjolein; Buitelaar, Jan K.; Hartman, Catharina A.; Hoekstra, Pieter J.; Franke, Barbara; Faraone, Stephen V.; Heslenfeld, Dirk J.; Oosterlaan, Jaap
2016-01-01
Objective Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) is highly prevalent in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and may account for inconsistencies in findings on neurocognitive functioning in ADHD. Our aim was to assess cool and hot executive functioning (EF) and temporal processing in ADHD with and without comorbid ODD to elucidate the effects of comorbid ODD. Method ADHD-only (n = 82), ADHD + ODD (n = 82), and controls (n = 82), with mean age 16 years (SD = 3.1), matched for age, gender, IQ, and ADHD type (clinical groups) were assessed on cool EF (inhibition, working memory), hot EF (reinforcement processing, emotion recognition), and temporal processing (time production and reproduction). Results Individuals with ADHD + ODD showed abnormalities in inhibition, working memory, facial emotion recognition, and temporal processing, whereas individuals with ADHD-only were solely impaired in working memory and time production. Conclusion Findings suggest that ODD carries a substantial part of the EF deficits observed in ADHD and contrast with current theories of neurocognitive impairments in ADHD. PMID:26486602
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Colbert, Alison M; Bo, Jin
2017-07-01
This study examined relationships between inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behaviors and working memory (WM) functioning, and the utility of WM in categorical diagnosis of ADHD versus considering ADHD symptoms on a continuum. The study included 50 male children (6-12 years). Inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive behaviors were measured by the Conners-3P parent report, and WM was assessed by the WISC-IV WM subtests and Working Memory Index (WMI). WISC-IV Arithmetic and Digit Span Backward were most consistently related to inattentive behaviors, and no WM measure was consistently related to ADHD hyperactive/impulsive behaviors. Arithmetic and Digit Span Backward also accounted for significant variance in inattentive behaviors and ADHD inattention symptoms, respectively. Neither the WMI nor the Arithmetic subtest correctly classified individuals diagnosed with ADHD. Measurement of inattentive behaviors on a continuum best characterized relationships between symptoms of ADHD and WM functioning; WM functioning did not have utility in categorical understanding of ADHD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Executive Function, Visual Attention and the Cocktail Party Problem in Musicians and Non-Musicians.
Clayton, Kameron K; Swaminathan, Jayaganesh; Yazdanbakhsh, Arash; Zuk, Jennifer; Patel, Aniruddh D; Kidd, Gerald
2016-01-01
The goal of this study was to investigate how cognitive factors influence performance in a multi-talker, "cocktail-party" like environment in musicians and non-musicians. This was achieved by relating performance in a spatial hearing task to cognitive processing abilities assessed using measures of executive function (EF) and visual attention in musicians and non-musicians. For the spatial hearing task, a speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible speech maskers that were either colocated with the target (0° azimuth) or were symmetrically separated from the target in azimuth (at ±15°). EF assessment included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibition control and auditory working memory. Selective attention was assessed in the visual domain using a multiple object tracking task (MOT). For the MOT task, the observers were required to track target dots (n = 1,2,3,4,5) in the presence of interfering distractor dots. Musicians performed significantly better than non-musicians in the spatial hearing task. For the EF measures, musicians showed better performance on measures of auditory working memory compared to non-musicians. Furthermore, across all individuals, a significant correlation was observed between performance on the spatial hearing task and measures of auditory working memory. This result suggests that individual differences in performance in a cocktail party-like environment may depend in part on cognitive factors such as auditory working memory. Performance in the MOT task did not differ between groups. However, across all individuals, a significant correlation was found between performance in the MOT and spatial hearing tasks. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that musicianship and performance on the MOT task significantly predicted performance on the spatial hearing task. Overall, these findings confirm the relationship between musicianship and cognitive factors including domain-general selective attention and working memory in solving the "cocktail party problem".
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Executive Function, Visual Attention and the Cocktail Party Problem in Musicians and Non-Musicians
Clayton, Kameron K.; Swaminathan, Jayaganesh; Yazdanbakhsh, Arash; Zuk, Jennifer; Patel, Aniruddh D.; Kidd, Gerald
2016-01-01
The goal of this study was to investigate how cognitive factors influence performance in a multi-talker, “cocktail-party” like environment in musicians and non-musicians. This was achieved by relating performance in a spatial hearing task to cognitive processing abilities assessed using measures of executive function (EF) and visual attention in musicians and non-musicians. For the spatial hearing task, a speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible speech maskers that were either colocated with the target (0° azimuth) or were symmetrically separated from the target in azimuth (at ±15°). EF assessment included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibition control and auditory working memory. Selective attention was assessed in the visual domain using a multiple object tracking task (MOT). For the MOT task, the observers were required to track target dots (n = 1,2,3,4,5) in the presence of interfering distractor dots. Musicians performed significantly better than non-musicians in the spatial hearing task. For the EF measures, musicians showed better performance on measures of auditory working memory compared to non-musicians. Furthermore, across all individuals, a significant correlation was observed between performance on the spatial hearing task and measures of auditory working memory. This result suggests that individual differences in performance in a cocktail party-like environment may depend in part on cognitive factors such as auditory working memory. Performance in the MOT task did not differ between groups. However, across all individuals, a significant correlation was found between performance in the MOT and spatial hearing tasks. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that musicianship and performance on the MOT task significantly predicted performance on the spatial hearing task. Overall, these findings confirm the relationship between musicianship and cognitive factors including domain-general selective attention and working memory in solving the “cocktail party problem”. PMID:27384330
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Early handling effect on female rat spatial and non-spatial learning and memory.
Plescia, Fulvio; Marino, Rosa A M; Navarra, Michele; Gambino, Giuditta; Brancato, Anna; Sardo, Pierangelo; Cannizzaro, Carla
2014-03-01
This study aims at providing an insight into early handling procedures on learning and memory performance in adult female rats. Early handling procedures were started on post-natal day 2 until 21, and consisted in 15 min, daily separations of the dams from their litters. Assessment of declarative memory was carried out in the novel-object recognition task; spatial learning, reference- and working memory were evaluated in the Morris water maze (MWM). Our results indicate that early handling induced an enhancement in: (1) declarative memory, in the object recognition task, both at 1h and 24h intervals; (2) reference memory in the probe test and working memory and behavioral flexibility in the "single-trial and four-trial place learning paradigm" of the MWM. Short-term separation by increasing maternal care causes a dampening in HPA axis response in the pups. A modulated activation of the stress response may help to protect brain structures, involved in cognitive function. In conclusion, this study shows the long-term effects of a brief maternal separation in enhancing object recognition-, spatial reference- and working memory in female rats, remarking the impact of early environmental experiences and the consequent maternal care on the behavioral adaptive mechanisms in adulthood. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Prefrontal Hemodynamics of Physical Activity and Environmental Complexity During Cognitive Work.
McKendrick, Ryan; Mehta, Ranjana; Ayaz, Hasan; Scheldrup, Melissa; Parasuraman, Raja
2017-02-01
The aim of this study was to assess performance and cognitive states during cognitive work in the presence of physical work and in natural settings. Authors of previous studies have examined the interaction between cognitive and physical work, finding performance decrements in working memory. Neuroimaging has revealed increases and decreases in prefrontal oxygenated hemoglobin during the interaction of cognitive and physical work. The effect of environment on cognitive-physical dual tasking has not been previously considered. Thirteen participants were monitored with wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as they performed an auditory 1-back task while sitting, walking indoors, and walking outdoors. Relative to sitting and walking indoors, auditory working memory performance declined when participants were walking outdoors. Sitting during the auditory 1-back task increased oxygenated hemoglobin and decreased deoxygenated hemoglobin in bilateral prefrontal cortex. Walking reduced the total hemoglobin available to bilateral prefrontal cortex. An increase in environmental complexity reduced oxygenated hemoglobin and increased deoxygenated hemoglobin in bilateral prefrontal cortex. Wireless fNIRS is capable of monitoring cognitive states in naturalistic environments. Selective attention and physical work compete with executive processing. During executive processing loading of selective attention and physical work results in deactivation of bilateral prefrontal cortex and degraded working memory performance, indicating that physical work and concomitant selective attention may supersede executive processing in the distribution of mental resources. This research informs decision-making procedures in work where working memory, physical activity, and attention interact. Where working memory is paramount, precautions should be taken to eliminate competition from physical work and selective attention.
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Ribeiro, Patrícia O; Rodrigues, Paula C; Valentim, Ana M; Antunes, Luís M
2013-10-01
Ketamine is an anaesthetic and analgesic drug used in research and clinical practice. Little is known about the effects of different doses of this drug on memory and brain cellular death. To study the effects of different doses of ketamine on working and reference memory, and neurodegeneration in adult mice. A randomised study. The study was carried out in a basic science laboratory, between March 2011 and August 2012. Forty-eight 7-month-old, male C57BL/6 mice were used. Animals received a single intraperitoneal injection of physiological saline solution or one of three doses of ketamine (25, 75 or 150 mg kg(-1)). Each group consisted of 12 animals (seven animals for behavioural tests and five animals for histopathological and immunohistochemical studies). The animals used for histopathology studies were sacrificed 3 h after anaesthesia. Working and reference memories were assessed using the radial-maze test over 12 consecutive days. The equilibrium was tested using the vertical pole (4 and 24 h after injection), whereas locomotion was assessed using the open field (24, 48 and 72 h after injection). Histopathological (haematoxylin-eosin staining) and immunohistochemical analyses (procaspase-3 and activated caspase-3 detections) were performed 3 h after injection to assess neurodegeneration in the retrosplenial and visual cortices, pyramidal cell layer of the cornu Ammonis 1 and cornu Ammonis 3 areas of the hippocampus, in the granular layer of the dentate gyrus, in the laterodorsal thalamic nucleus, striatum and accumbens nucleus. No significant differences were observed between the groups regarding the number of dead cells and cells showing positive immune-reactivity in the different regions of the brain studied. The performance in the vertical pole test and the number of reference and working memory errors in the radial-maze were similar in all groups. Nevertheless, the animals treated with ketamine 75 mg kg(-1) were transiently more active, walking a greater total distance at a greater speed in the open field than other groups (power of 0.96). These data indicate that a single intraperitoneal injection of ketamine at subanaesthetic and anaesthetic doses does not impair working memory, reference memory or neurodegeneration in adult mice, but an intermediate dose of ketamine produces transitory hyperlocomotion.
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Knowledge cannot explain the developmental growth of working memory capacity.
Cowan, Nelson; Ricker, Timothy J; Clark, Katherine M; Hinrichs, Garrett A; Glass, Bret A
2015-01-01
According to some views of cognitive growth, the development of working memory capacity can account for increases in the complexity of cognition. It has been difficult to ascertain, though, that there actually is developmental growth in capacity that cannot be attributed to other developing factors. Here we assess the role of item familiarity. We document developmental increases in working memory for visual arrays of English letters versus unfamiliar characters. Although letter knowledge played a special role in development between the ages of 6 and 8 years, children with adequate letter knowledge showed practically the same developmental growth in normalized functions for letters and unfamiliar characters. The results contribute to a growing body of evidence that the developmental improvement in working memory does not wholly stem from supporting processes such as encoding, mnemonic strategies, and knowledge. A video abstract is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJdqErLR2Hs&feature=youtu.be. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Working memory predicts children's analogical reasoning.
Simms, Nina K; Frausel, Rebecca R; Richland, Lindsey E
2018-02-01
Analogical reasoning is the cognitive skill of drawing relationships between representations, often between prior knowledge and new representations, that allows for bootstrapping cognitive and language development. Analogical reasoning proficiency develops substantially during childhood, although the mechanisms underlying this development have been debated, with developing cognitive resources as one proposed mechanism. We explored the role of executive function (EF) in supporting children's analogical reasoning development, with the goal of determining whether predicted aspects of EF were related to analogical development at the level of individual differences. We assessed 5- to 11-year-old children's working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility using measures from the National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognition battery. Individual differences in children's working memory best predicted performance on an analogical mapping task, even when controlling for age, suggesting a fundamental interrelationship between analogical reasoning and working memory development. These findings underscore the need to consider cognitive capacities in comprehensive theories of children's reasoning development. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Music and Video Gaming during Breaks: Influence on Habitual versus Goal-Directed Decision Making.
Liu, Shuyan; Schad, Daniel J; Kuschpel, Maxim S; Rapp, Michael A; Heinz, Andreas
2016-01-01
Different systems for habitual versus goal-directed control are thought to underlie human decision-making. Working memory is known to shape these decision-making systems and their interplay, and is known to support goal-directed decision making even under stress. Here, we investigated if and how decision systems are differentially influenced by breaks filled with diverse everyday life activities known to modulate working memory performance. We used a within-subject design where young adults listened to music and played a video game during breaks interleaved with trials of a sequential two-step Markov decision task, designed to assess habitual as well as goal-directed decision making. Based on a neurocomputational model of task performance, we observed that for individuals with a rather limited working memory capacity video gaming as compared to music reduced reliance on the goal-directed decision-making system, while a rather large working memory capacity prevented such a decline. Our findings suggest differential effects of everyday activities on key decision-making processes.
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del Río, David; Cuesta, Pablo; Bajo, Ricardo; García-Pacios, Javier; López-Higes, Ramón; del-Pozo, Francisco; Maestú, Fernando
2012-11-01
Inter-individual differences in cognitive performance are based on an efficient use of task-related brain resources. However, little is known yet on how these differences might be reflected on resting-state brain networks. Here we used Magnetoencephalography resting-state recordings to assess the relationship between a behavioral measurement of verbal working memory and functional connectivity as measured through Mutual Information. We studied theta (4-8 Hz), low alpha (8-10 Hz), high alpha (10-13 Hz), low beta (13-18 Hz) and high beta (18-30 Hz) frequency bands. A higher verbal working memory capacity was associated with a lower mutual information in the low alpha band, prominently among right-anterior and left-lateral sensors. The results suggest that an efficient brain organization in the domain of verbal working memory might be related to a lower resting-state functional connectivity across large-scale brain networks possibly involving right prefrontal and left perisylvian areas. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Sturm, Alexandra; Rozenman, Michelle; Piacentini, John C; McGough, James J; Loo, Sandra K; McCracken, James T
2018-03-20
Predictors of math achievement in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are not well-known. To address this gap in the literature, we examined individual differences in neurocognitive functioning domains on math computation in a cross-sectional sample of youth with ADHD. Gender and anxiety symptoms were explored as potential moderators. The sample consisted of 281 youth (aged 8-15 years) diagnosed with ADHD. Neurocognitive tasks assessed auditory-verbal working memory, visuospatial working memory, and processing speed. Auditory-verbal working memory speed significantly predicted math computation. A three-way interaction revealed that at low levels of anxious perfectionism, slower processing speed predicted poorer math computation for boys compared to girls. These findings indicate the uniquely predictive values of auditory-verbal working memory and processing speed on math computation, and their differential moderation. These findings provide preliminary support that gender and anxious perfectionism may influence the relationship between neurocognitive functioning and academic achievement.
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Music and Video Gaming during Breaks: Influence on Habitual versus Goal-Directed Decision Making
Kuschpel, Maxim S.; Rapp, Michael A.; Heinz, Andreas
2016-01-01
Different systems for habitual versus goal-directed control are thought to underlie human decision-making. Working memory is known to shape these decision-making systems and their interplay, and is known to support goal-directed decision making even under stress. Here, we investigated if and how decision systems are differentially influenced by breaks filled with diverse everyday life activities known to modulate working memory performance. We used a within-subject design where young adults listened to music and played a video game during breaks interleaved with trials of a sequential two-step Markov decision task, designed to assess habitual as well as goal-directed decision making. Based on a neurocomputational model of task performance, we observed that for individuals with a rather limited working memory capacity video gaming as compared to music reduced reliance on the goal-directed decision-making system, while a rather large working memory capacity prevented such a decline. Our findings suggest differential effects of everyday activities on key decision-making processes. PMID:26982326
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Andreotti, Charissa; Thigpen, Jennifer E; Dunn, Madeleine J; Watson, Kelly; Potts, Jennifer; Reising, Michelle M; Robinson, Kristen E; Rodriguez, Erin M; Roubinov, Danielle; Luecken, Linda; Compas, Bruce E
2013-01-01
The current study examined the relations of measures of cognitive reappraisal and secondary control coping with working memory abilities, positive and negative affect, and symptoms of anxiety and depression in young adults (N=124). Results indicate significant relations between working memory abilities and reports of secondary control coping and between reports of secondary control coping and cognitive reappraisal. Associations were also found between measures of secondary control coping and cognitive reappraisal and positive and negative affect and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Further, the findings suggest that reports of cognitive reappraisal may be more strongly predictive of positive affect whereas secondary control coping may be more strongly predictive of negative affect and symptoms of depression and anxiety. Overall, the results suggest that current measures of secondary control coping and cognitive reappraisal capture related but distinct constructs and suggest that the assessment of working memory may be more strongly related to secondary control coping in predicting individual differences in distress.
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Nelson, James K.; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A.; Persson, Jonas; Sylvester, Ching-Yune C.; Jonides, John
2009-01-01
Work in functional neuroimaging has mapped interference resolution processing onto left inferior frontal regions for both verbal working memory and a variety of semantic processing tasks. The proximity of the identified regions from these different tasks suggests the existence of a common, domain-general interference resolution mechanism. The current research specifically tests this idea in a within-subject design using fMRI to assess the activation associated with variable selection requirements in a semantic retrieval task (verb generation) and a verbal working memory task with a trial-specific proactive interference manipulation (recent-probes). High interference trials on both tasks were associated with activity in the midventrolateral region of the left inferior frontal gyrus, and the regions activated in each task strongly overlapped. The results indicate that an elemental component of executive control associated with interference resolution during retrieval from working memory and from semantic memory can be mapped to a common portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus. PMID:19111526
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Entringer, Sonja; Buss, Claudia; Kumsta, Robert; Hellhammer, Dirk H; Wadhwa, Pathik D; Wüst, Stefan
2009-08-01
The aim of the present study was to examine the association between prenatal psychosocial stress exposure and subsequent prefrontal cortex-dependent working memory performance in human adults. Working memory performance was assessed using an item-recognition task under 10 mg hydrocortisone (cortisol) and placebo conditions in a sample of 32 healthy young women (mean age = 25 +/- 4.34 years) whose mothers experienced a major negative life event during their pregnancy (Prenatal Stress, PS group), and in a comparison group of 27 healthy young women (mean age = 24 +/- 3.4 years). The two groups did not differ in the placebo condition, however, subjects in the PS group showed longer reaction times after hydrocortisone administration compared with subjects in the comparison group (p = .02). These findings provide support for an association between prenatal stress exposure and the potential modulatory effect of cortisol on working memory performance in young adults, which may reflect compromised development of the prefrontal cortex in prenatal life. 2009 APA, all rights reserved
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Goodman, Craig; Knoll, Gabriella; Isakov, Victoria; Silver, Henry
2005-03-01
A lack of insight into illness and negative attitudes towards medication are common among individuals with schizophrenia and impact clinical outcomes. This study aimed to examine the relationships between attitudes towards medication and cognitive function in schizophrenia patients. Thirty-five male forensic inpatients who were suffering from chronic schizophrenia participated in the study. A drug attitude inventory was used to evaluate the attitudes of the patients towards medication. Neuropsychological function was assessed with a comprehensive battery of tests. Patients with positive attitudes towards medication performed significantly better than those with negative attitudes on tests of verbal working memory (digit span forwards and backwards), inhibition and set shifting (Penn Inhibition test), delayed object memory and overall mental status (Mini Mental State Examination). There were no differences in age, education, hospitalizations or clinical symptoms between the groups. Our findings support an association between negative attitudes towards medication and poor cognitive performance, particularly of working memory.
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What–where–when memory and encoding strategies in healthy aging
2016-01-01
Older adults exhibit disproportionate impairments in memory for item-associations. These impairments may stem from an inability to self-initiate deep encoding strategies. The present study investigates this using the “treasure-hunt task”; a what–where–when style episodic memory test that requires individuals to “hide” items around complex scenes. This task separately assesses memory for item, location, and temporal order, as well as bound what–where–when information. The results suggest that older adults are able to ameliorate integration memory deficits by using self-initiated encoding strategies when these are externally located and therefore place reduced demands on working memory and attentional resources. PMID:26884230
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Spencer, Caroline; Weber-Fox, Christine
2014-01-01
Purpose In preschool children, we investigated whether expressive and receptive language, phonological, articulatory, and/or verbal working memory proficiencies aid in predicting eventual recovery or persistence of stuttering. Methods Participants included 65 children, including 25 children who do not stutter (CWNS) and 40 who stutter (CWS) recruited at age 3;9–5;8. At initial testing, participants were administered the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, 3rd edition (TACL-3), Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test, 3rd edition (SPELT-3), Bankson-Bernthal Test of Phonology-Consonant Inventory subtest (BBTOP-CI), Nonword Repetition Test (NRT; Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998), and Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills-Revised (TAPS-R) auditory number memory and auditory word memory subtests. Stuttering behaviors of CWS were assessed in subsequent years, forming groups whose stuttering eventually persisted (CWS-Per; n=19) or recovered (CWS-Rec; n=21). Proficiency scores in morphosyntactic skills, consonant production, verbal working memory for known words, and phonological working memory and speech production for novel nonwords obtained at the initial testing were analyzed for each group. Results CWS-Per were less proficient than CWNS and CWS-Rec in measures of consonant production (BBTOP-CI) and repetition of novel phonological sequences (NRT). In contrast, receptive language, expressive language, and verbal working memory abilities did not distinguish CWS-Rec from CWS-Per. Binary logistic regression analysis indicated that preschool BBTOP-CI scores and overall NRT proficiency significantly predicted future recovery status. Conclusion Results suggest that phonological and speech articulation abilities in the preschool years should be considered with other predictive factors as part of a comprehensive risk assessment for the development of chronic stuttering. PMID:25173455
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Tobinaga, Seisho; Hashimoto, Michio; Utsunomiya, Iku; Taguchi, Kyoji; Nakamura, Morihiko; Tsunematsu, Tokugoro
2012-01-01
Cardanol (ginkgol) extracted from Ginkgo biloba leaves and cashew nutshell liquid enhances the growth of NSC-34 immortalized motor neuron-like cells and, when chronically administered to young rats, improves working memory-related learning ability as assessed by eight-arm radial maze tasks. These findings suggest that cardanol is one of the components in Ginkgo biloba leaves that improves cognitive learning ability.
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Patients with chronic insomnia have selective impairments in memory that are modulated by cortisol.
Chen, Gui-Hai; Xia, Lan; Wang, Fang; Li, Xue-Wei; Jiao, Chuan-An
2016-10-01
Memory impairment is a frequent complaint in insomniacs; however, it is not consistently demonstrated. It is unknown whether memory impairment in insomniacs involves neuroendocrine dysfunction. The participants in this study were selected from the clinical setting and included 21 patients with chronic insomnia disorder (CID), 25 patients with insomnia and comorbid depressive disorder (CDD), and 20 control participants without insomnia. We evaluated spatial working and reference memory, object working and reference memory, and object recognition memory using the Nine Box Maze Test. We also evaluated serum neuroendocrine hormone levels. Compared to the controls, the CID patients made significantly more errors in spatial working and object recognition memory (p < .05), whereas the CDD patients performed poorly in all the assessed memory types (p < .05). In addition, the CID patients had higher levels (mean difference [95% CI]) of corticotrophin-releasing hormone, cortisol (31.98 [23.97, 39.98] μg/l), total triiodothyronine (667.58 [505.71, 829.45] μg/l), and total thyroxine (41.49 [33.23, 49.74] μg/l) (p < .05), and lower levels of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (-35.93 [-38.83, -33.02] ng/l), gonadotropin-releasing hormone (-4.50 [-5.02, -3.98] ng/l) (p < .05), and adrenocorticotropic hormone compared to the CDD patients. After controlling for confounding variables, the partial correlation analysis revealed that the levels of cortisol positively correlated with the errors in object working memory (r = .534, p = .033) and negatively correlated with the errors in object recognition memory (r = -.659, p = .006) in the CID patients. The results suggest that the CID patients had selective memory impairment, which may be mediated by increased cortisol levels. © 2016 Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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Effects on locomotion and memory in 2 models of cerebral hypoperfusion in male Wistar rats.
Martínez-Díaz, J A; García, L I; Hernández, M E; Aranda-Abreu, G E
2015-09-01
Cerebral ischaemia is one of the most common neurological diseases worldwide. Its many sequelae range from motor and sensory symptoms to cognitive decline and dementia. Animal models of cerebral ischaemia/hypoperfusion elicit effects on long term memory; however, the effects of these procedures on short term memory are not clearly understood and effects induced by alternative hypoperfusion models are completely unknown. We evaluated the effects of 2 cerebral hyperperfusion models on memory in 3-month-old male rats. Episodic memory and working memory were assessed using the new object recognition test and the spontaneous alteration test, respectively. Neurological assessment was also performed, along with an open field test to evaluate locomotor activity. Rats in both hyperperfusion models displayed no cognitive changes. Rats with unilateral left-sided ligation plus temporary ligation of the right carotid tended to show slightly impaired performance on the new object recognition test on the second day after the procedure. In contrast, the group with permanent unilateral ligation tended to display alterations in working and episodic memory 9 days after the procedure, but they subsequently recovered. Despite these differences, both hypoperfusion groups displayed clear signs of motor impairment 2 days after the procedure, as reflected by their decreased locomotor activity during the open field test. Copyright © 2014 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.
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Brébion, Gildas; Stephan-Otto, Christian; Huerta-Ramos, Elena; Ochoa, Susana; Usall, Judith; Abellán-Vega, Helena; Roca, Mercedes; Haro, Josep Maria
2015-01-01
Previous research has revealed the contribution of decreased processing speed and reduced working memory span in verbal and visual memory impairment in patients with schizophrenia. The role of affective symptoms in verbal memory has also emerged in a few studies. The authors designed a picture recognition task to investigate the impact of these factors on visual encoding. Two types of pictures (black and white vs. colored) were presented under 2 different conditions of context encoding (either displayed at a specific location or in association with another visual stimulus). It was assumed that the process of encoding associated pictures was more effortful than that of encoding pictures that were presented alone. Working memory span and processing speed were assessed. In the patient group, working memory span was significantly associated with the recognition of the associated pictures but not significantly with that of the other pictures. Controlling for processing speed eliminated the patients' deficit in the recognition of the colored pictures and greatly reduced their deficit in the recognition of the black-and-white pictures. The recognition of the black-and-white pictures was inversely related to anxiety in men and to depression in women. Working memory span constrains the effortful visual encoding processes in patients, whereas processing speed decrement accounts for most of their visual encoding deficit. Affective symptoms also have an impact on visual encoding, albeit differently in men and women. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved.
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Mapping the developmental constraints on working memory span performance.
Bayliss, Donna M; Jarrold, Christopher; Baddeley, Alan D; Gunn, Deborah M; Leigh, Eleanor
2005-07-01
This study investigated the constraints underlying developmental improvements in complex working memory span performance among 120 children of between 6 and 10 years of age. Independent measures of processing efficiency, storage capacity, rehearsal speed, and basic speed of processing were assessed to determine their contribution to age-related variance in complex span. Results showed that developmental improvements in complex span were driven by 2 age-related but separable factors: 1 associated with general speed of processing and 1 associated with storage ability. In addition, there was an age-related contribution shared between working memory, processing speed, and storage ability that was important for higher level cognition. These results pose a challenge for models of complex span performance that emphasize the importance of processing speed alone.
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Awh, E; Anllo-Vento, L; Hillyard, S A
2000-09-01
We investigated the hypothesis that the covert focusing of spatial attention mediates the on-line maintenance of location information in spatial working memory. During the delay period of a spatial working-memory task, behaviorally irrelevant probe stimuli were flashed at both memorized and nonmemorized locations. Multichannel recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to assess visual processing of the probes at the different locations. Consistent with the hypothesis of attention-based rehearsal, early ERP components were enlarged in response to probes that appeared at memorized locations. These visual modulations were similar in latency and topography to those observed after explicit manipulations of spatial selective attention in a parallel experimental condition that employed an identical stimulus display.
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Kinno, Ryuta; Shiromaru, Azusa; Mori, Yukiko; Futamura, Akinori; Kuroda, Takeshi; Yano, Satoshi; Murakami, Hidetomo; Ono, Kenjiro
2017-01-01
The Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) is one of the internationally well-known batteries for memory assessment in a general memory clinic setting. Several factor structures of the WMS-R for patients aged under 74 have been proposed. However, little is known about the factor structure of the WMS-R for patients aged over 75 years and its neurological significance. Thus, we conducted exploratory factor analysis to determine the factor structure of the WMS-R for patients aged over 75 years in a memory clinic setting. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was calculated from single-photon emission computed tomography data. Cortical thickness and cortical fractal dimension, as the marker of cortical complexity, were calculated from high resolution magnetic resonance imaging data. We found that the four factors appeared to be the most appropriate solution to the model, including recognition memory, paired associate memory, visual-and-working memory, and attention as factors. Patients with mild cognitive impairments showed significantly higher factor scores for paired associate memory, visual-and-working memory, and attention than patients with Alzheimer's disease. Regarding the neuroimaging data, the factor scores for paired associate memory positively correlated with rCBF in the left pericallosal and hippocampal regions. Moreover, the factor score for paired associate memory showed most robust correlations with the cortical thickness in the limbic system, whereas the factor score for attention correlated with the cortical thickness in the bilateral precuneus. Furthermore, each factor score correlated with the cortical fractal dimension in the bilateral frontotemporal regions. Interestingly, the factor scores for the visual-and-working memory and attention selectively correlated with the cortical fractal dimension in the right posterior cingulate cortex and right precuneus cortex, respectively. These findings demonstrate that recognition memory, paired associate memory, visual-and-working memory, and attention can be crucial factors for interpreting the WMS-R results of elderly patients aged over 75 years in a memory clinic setting. Considering these findings, the results of WMS-R in elderly patients aged over 75 years in a memory clinic setting should be cautiously interpreted.
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Elliott, Madison; Parente, Frederick
2014-01-01
To examine the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation strategies specifically designed to improve memory after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke vs. memory improvement with the passage of time. A meta-analysis was performed on 26 studies of memory retraining and recovery that were published between the years of 1985 and 2013. Effect sizes (ESs) from each study were calculated and converted to Pearson's r and then analysed to assess the overall effect size and the relationship among the ESs, patient demographics and treatment interventions. RESULTS indicated a significant average ES (r = 0.51) in the treatment intervention conditions, as well as a significant average ES (r = 0.31) in the control conditions, in which participants did not receive any treatment. The largest ESs occurred in studies of stroke patients and studies concerning working memory rehabilitation. RESULTS showed that memory rehabilitation was an effective therapeutic intervention, especially for stroke patients and for working memory as a treatment domain. However, the results also indicated that significant memory improvement occurred spontaneously over time.
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The influence of levels of processing on recall from working memory and delayed recall tasks.
Loaiza, Vanessa M; McCabe, David P; Youngblood, Jessie L; Rose, Nathan S; Myerson, Joel
2011-09-01
Recent research in working memory has highlighted the similarities involved in retrieval from complex span tasks and episodic memory tasks, suggesting that these tasks are influenced by similar memory processes. In the present article, the authors manipulated the level of processing engaged when studying to-be-remembered words during a reading span task (Experiment 1) and an operation span task (Experiment 2) in order to assess the role of retrieval from secondary memory during complex span tasks. Immediate recall from both span tasks was greater for items studied under deep processing instructions compared with items studied under shallow processing instructions regardless of trial length. Recall was better for deep than for shallow levels of processing on delayed recall tests as well. These data are consistent with the primary-secondary memory framework, which suggests that to-be-remembered items are displaced from primary memory (i.e., the focus of attention) during the processing phases of complex span tasks and therefore must be retrieved from secondary memory. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.
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Assessment of Syntax after Adolescent Brain Injury: Effects of Memory on Test Performance.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Turkstra, Lyn S.; Holland, Audrey L.
1998-01-01
This study of six adolescents with brain injuries, and six controls, investigated the influence of working memory load on performance of a task designed to measure receptive syntax ability. The performance of the adolescents with brain injuries was significantly worse than that of controls. (Author/CR)
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Lin, Po-Han; Luck, Steven J.
2012-01-01
The change detection task has become a standard method for estimating the storage capacity of visual working memory. Most researchers assume that this task isolates the properties of an active short-term storage system that can be dissociated from long-term memory systems. However, long-term memory storage may influence performance on this task. In particular, memory traces from previous trials may create proactive interference that sometimes leads to errors, thereby reducing estimated capacity. Consequently, the capacity of visual working memory may be higher than is usually thought, and correlations between capacity and other measures of cognition may reflect individual differences in proactive interference rather than individual differences in the capacity of the short-term storage system. Indeed, previous research has shown that change detection performance can be influenced by proactive interference under some conditions. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the canonical version of the change detection task – in which the to-be-remembered information consists of simple, briefly presented features – is influenced by proactive interference. Two experiments were conducted using methods that ordinarily produce substantial evidence of proactive interference, but no proactive interference was observed. Thus, the canonical version of the change detection task can be used to assess visual working memory capacity with no meaningful influence of proactive interference. PMID:22403556
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Lin, Po-Han; Luck, Steven J
2012-01-01
The change detection task has become a standard method for estimating the storage capacity of visual working memory. Most researchers assume that this task isolates the properties of an active short-term storage system that can be dissociated from long-term memory systems. However, long-term memory storage may influence performance on this task. In particular, memory traces from previous trials may create proactive interference that sometimes leads to errors, thereby reducing estimated capacity. Consequently, the capacity of visual working memory may be higher than is usually thought, and correlations between capacity and other measures of cognition may reflect individual differences in proactive interference rather than individual differences in the capacity of the short-term storage system. Indeed, previous research has shown that change detection performance can be influenced by proactive interference under some conditions. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the canonical version of the change detection task - in which the to-be-remembered information consists of simple, briefly presented features - is influenced by proactive interference. Two experiments were conducted using methods that ordinarily produce substantial evidence of proactive interference, but no proactive interference was observed. Thus, the canonical version of the change detection task can be used to assess visual working memory capacity with no meaningful influence of proactive interference.
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Cognitive correlates of long-term cannabis use in Costa Rican men.
Fletcher, J M; Page, J B; Francis, D J; Copeland, K; Naus, M J; Davis, C M; Morris, R; Krauskopf, D; Satz, P
1996-11-01
Cognitive correlates of long-term cannabis use have been elusive. We tested the hypothesis that long-term cannabis use is associated with deficits in short term memory, working memory, and attention in a literate, westernized culture (Costa Rica) in which the effects of cannabis use can be isolated. Two cohorts of long-term cannabis users and nonusers were studied. Within each cohort, users and nonusers were comparable in age and socioeconomic status. Polydrug users and users who tested positive for the use of cannabis at the time of cognitive assessment after a 72-hour abstention period were excluded. The older cohort (whose age was approximately 45 years) had consumed cannabis for an average of 34 years, and comprised 17 users and 30 nonusers, who had been recruited in San José, Costa Rica, and had been observed since 1973. The younger cohort (whose age was approximately 28 years) had consumed cannabis for an average of 8 years, and comprised 37 users and 49 nonusers. Short-term memory, working memory, and attentional skills were measured in each subject. Older long-term users performed worse than older nonusers on 2 short-term memory tests involving learning lists of words. In addition, older long-term users performed worse than older nonusers on selective and divided attention tasks associated with working memory. No notable differences were apparent between younger users and nonusers. Long-term cannabis use was associated with disruption of short-term memory, working memory, and attentional skills in older long-term cannabis users.
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A Psychometric Measure of Working Memory Capacity for Configured Body Movement
Wu, Ying Choon; Coulson, Seana
2014-01-01
Working memory (WM) models have traditionally assumed at least two domain-specific storage systems for verbal and visuo-spatial information. We review data that suggest the existence of an additional slave system devoted to the temporary storage of body movements, and present a novel instrument for its assessment: the movement span task. The movement span task assesses individuals' ability to remember and reproduce meaningless configurations of the body. During the encoding phase of a trial, participants watch short videos of meaningless movements presented in sets varying in size from one to five items. Immediately after encoding, they are prompted to reenact as many items as possible. The movement span task was administered to 90 participants along with standard tests of verbal WM, visuo-spatial WM, and a gesture classification test in which participants judged whether a speaker's gestures were congruent or incongruent with his accompanying speech. Performance on the gesture classification task was not related to standard measures of verbal or visuo-spatial working memory capacity, but was predicted by scores on the movement span task. Results suggest the movement span task can serve as an assessment of individual differences in WM capacity for body-centric information. PMID:24465437
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O'Hanlon, Erik; Howley, Sarah; Prasad, Sarah; McGrath, Jane; Leemans, Alexander; McDonald, Colm; Garavan, Hugh; Murphy, Kieran C
2016-12-01
Impaired spatial working memory is a core cognitive deficit observed in people with 22q11 Deletion syndrome (22q11DS) and has been suggested as a candidate endophenotype for schizophrenia. However, to date, the neuroanatomical mechanisms describing its structural and functional underpinnings in 22q11DS remain unclear. We quantitatively investigate the cognitive processes and associated neuroanatomy of spatial working memory in people with 22q11DS compared to matched controls. We examine whether there are significant between-group differences in spatial working memory using task related fMRI, Voxel based morphometry and white matter fiber tractography. Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging employing functional, diffusion and volumetric techniques were used to quantitatively assess the cognitive and neuroanatomical features of spatial working memory processes in 22q11DS. Twenty-six participants with genetically confirmed 22q11DS aged between 9 and 52 years and 26 controls aged between 8 and 46 years, matched for age, gender, and handedness were recruited. People with 22q11DS have significant differences in spatial working memory functioning accompanied by a gray matter volume reduction in the right precuneus. Gray matter volume was significantly correlated with task performance scores in these areas. Tractography revealed extensive differences along fibers between task-related cortical activations with pronounced differences localized to interhemispheric commissural fibers within the parietal section of the corpus callosum. Abnormal spatial working memory in 22q11DS is associated with aberrant functional activity in conjunction with gray and white matter structural abnormalities. These anomalies in discrete brain regions may increase susceptibility to the development of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4689-4705, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Rzucidlo, Justyna K; Roseman, Paige L; Laurienti, Paul J; Dagenbach, Dale
2013-01-01
Graph-theory based analyses of resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data have been used to map the network organization of the brain. While numerous analyses of resting state brain organization exist, many questions remain unexplored. The present study examines the stability of findings based on this approach over repeated resting state and working memory state sessions within the same individuals. This allows assessment of stability of network topology within the same state for both rest and working memory, and between rest and working memory as well. fMRI scans were performed on five participants while at rest and while performing the 2-back working memory task five times each, with task state alternating while they were in the scanner. Voxel-based whole brain network analyses were performed on the resulting data along with analyses of functional connectivity in regions associated with resting state and working memory. Network topology was fairly stable across repeated sessions of the same task, but varied significantly between rest and working memory. In the whole brain analysis, local efficiency, Eloc, differed significantly between rest and working memory. Analyses of network statistics for the precuneus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex revealed significant differences in degree as a function of task state for both regions and in local efficiency for the precuneus. Conversely, no significant differences were observed across repeated sessions of the same state. These findings suggest that network topology is fairly stable within individuals across time for the same state, but also fluid between states. Whole brain voxel-based network analyses may prove to be a valuable tool for exploring how functional connectivity changes in response to task demands.
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Unni, Anirudh; Ihme, Klas; Jipp, Meike; Rieger, Jochem W.
2017-01-01
Cognitive overload or underload results in a decrease in human performance which may result in fatal incidents while driving. We envision that driver assistive systems which adapt their functionality to the driver’s cognitive state could be a promising approach to reduce road accidents due to human errors. This research attempts to predict variations of cognitive working memory load levels in a natural driving scenario with multiple parallel tasks and to reveal predictive brain areas. We used a modified version of the n-back task to induce five different working memory load levels (from 0-back up to 4-back) forcing the participants to continuously update, memorize, and recall the previous ‘n’ speed sequences and adjust their speed accordingly while they drove for approximately 60 min on a highway with concurrent traffic in a virtual reality driving simulator. We measured brain activation using multichannel whole head, high density functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and predicted working memory load level from the fNIRS data by combining multivariate lasso regression and cross-validation. This allowed us to predict variations in working memory load in a continuous time-resolved manner with mean Pearson correlations between induced and predicted working memory load over 15 participants of 0.61 [standard error (SE) 0.04] and a maximum of 0.8. Restricting the analysis to prefrontal sensors placed over the forehead reduced the mean correlation to 0.38 (SE 0.04), indicating additional information gained through whole head coverage. Moreover, working memory load predictions derived from peripheral heart rate parameters achieved much lower correlations (mean 0.21, SE 0.1). Importantly, whole head fNIRS sampling revealed increasing brain activation in bilateral inferior frontal and bilateral temporo-occipital brain areas with increasing working memory load levels suggesting that these areas are specifically involved in workload-related processing. PMID:28424602
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Boissoneault, Jeff; Frazier, Ian; Lewis, Ben; Nixon, Sara Jo
2016-01-01
Background Previous studies suggest older adults may be differentially susceptible to the acute neurobehavioral effects of moderate alcohol intake. To our knowledge, no studies have addressed acute moderate alcohol effects on the electrophysiological correlates of working memory in younger and older social drinkers. This study characterized alcohol-related effects on frontal theta (FTP) and posterior alpha power (PAP) associated with maintenance of visual information during a working memory task. Methods Older (55–70 years of age; n = 51, 29 women) and younger (25–35 years of age; n = 70, 39 women) community-dwelling moderate drinkers were recruited for this study. Participants were given either placebo or an active dose targeting breath alcohol concentrations (BrACs) of 0.04 or 0.065 g/dL. Following absorption, participants completed a visual working memory task assessing cue recognition following a 9s delay. FTP and PAP were determined via Fourier transformation and subjected to 2 (age group) X 3 (dose) X 2 (repeated: working memory task condition) mixed models analysis. Results In addition to expected age-related reductions in PAP, a significant age group X dose interaction was detected for PAP such that 0.04 g/dL dose level was associated with greater PAP in younger adults but lower PAP in their older counterparts. PAP was lower in older vs younger adults at both active doses. Further mixed models revealed a significant negative association between PAP and working memory efficiency for older adults. No effects of age, dose, or their interaction were noted for FTP. Conclusions Results bolster the small but growing body of evidence that older adults exhibit differential sensitivity to the neurobehavioral effects of moderate alcohol use. Given the theoretical role of PAP in attentional and working memory function, these findings shed light on the attentional mechanisms underlying effects of acute moderate alcohol on working memory efficiency in older adults. PMID:27419803
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Unni, Anirudh; Ihme, Klas; Jipp, Meike; Rieger, Jochem W
2017-01-01
Cognitive overload or underload results in a decrease in human performance which may result in fatal incidents while driving. We envision that driver assistive systems which adapt their functionality to the driver's cognitive state could be a promising approach to reduce road accidents due to human errors. This research attempts to predict variations of cognitive working memory load levels in a natural driving scenario with multiple parallel tasks and to reveal predictive brain areas. We used a modified version of the n-back task to induce five different working memory load levels (from 0-back up to 4-back) forcing the participants to continuously update, memorize, and recall the previous 'n' speed sequences and adjust their speed accordingly while they drove for approximately 60 min on a highway with concurrent traffic in a virtual reality driving simulator. We measured brain activation using multichannel whole head, high density functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and predicted working memory load level from the fNIRS data by combining multivariate lasso regression and cross-validation. This allowed us to predict variations in working memory load in a continuous time-resolved manner with mean Pearson correlations between induced and predicted working memory load over 15 participants of 0.61 [standard error (SE) 0.04] and a maximum of 0.8. Restricting the analysis to prefrontal sensors placed over the forehead reduced the mean correlation to 0.38 (SE 0.04), indicating additional information gained through whole head coverage. Moreover, working memory load predictions derived from peripheral heart rate parameters achieved much lower correlations (mean 0.21, SE 0.1). Importantly, whole head fNIRS sampling revealed increasing brain activation in bilateral inferior frontal and bilateral temporo-occipital brain areas with increasing working memory load levels suggesting that these areas are specifically involved in workload-related processing.
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Roberts, Gehan; Quach, Jon; Gold, Lisa; Anderson, Peter; Rickards, Field; Mensah, Fiona; Ainley, John; Gathercole, Susan; Wake, Melissa
2011-06-20
Low academic achievement is common and is associated with adverse outcomes such as grade repetition, behavioural disorders and unemployment. The ability to accurately identify these children and intervene before they experience academic failure would be a major advance over the current 'wait to fail' model. Recent research suggests that a possible modifiable factor for low academic achievement is working memory, the ability to temporarily store and manipulate information in a 'mental workspace'. Children with working memory difficulties are at high risk of academic failure. It has recently been demonstrated that working memory can be improved with adaptive training tasks that encourage improvements in working memory capacity. Our trial will determine whether the intervention is efficacious as a selective prevention strategy for young children at risk of academic difficulties and is cost-effective. This randomised controlled trial aims to recruit 440 children with low working memory after a school-based screening of 2880 children in Grade one. We will approach caregivers of all children from 48 participating primary schools in metropolitan Melbourne for consent. Children with low working memory will be randomised to usual care or the intervention. The intervention will consist of 25 computerised working memory training sessions, which take approximately 35 minutes each to complete. Follow-up of children will be conducted at 6, 12 and 24 months post-randomisation through child face-to-face assessment, parent and teacher surveys and data from government authorities. The primary outcome is academic achievement at 12 and 24 months, and other outcomes include child behaviour, attention, health-related quality of life, working memory, and health and educational service utilisation. A successful start to formal learning in school sets the stage for future academic, psychological and economic well-being. If this preventive intervention can be shown to be efficacious, then we will have the potential to prevent academic underachievement in large numbers of at-risk children, to offer a ready-to-use intervention to the Australian school system and to build international research partnerships along the health-education interface, in order to carry our further studies of effectiveness and generalisability.
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Memory deficits associated with sublethal cyanide poisoning relative to cyanate toxicity in rodents.
Kimani, S; Sinei, K; Bukachi, F; Tshala-Katumbay, D; Maitai, C
2014-03-01
Food (cassava) linamarin is metabolized into neurotoxicants cyanide and cyanate, metabolites of which we sought to elucidate the differential toxicity effects on memory. Young 6-8 weeks old male rats were treated intraperitoneally with either 2.5 mg/kg body weight (bw) cyanide (NaCN), or 50 mg/kg bw cyanate (NaOCN), or 1 μl/g bw saline, daily for 6 weeks. Short-term and long-term memories were assessed using a radial arm maze (RAM) testing paradigm. Toxic exposures had an influence on short-term working memory with fewer correct arm entries (F(2, 19) = 4.57 p < 0.05), higher working memory errors (WME) (F(2, 19) = 5.09, p < 0.05) and longer RAM navigation time (F(2, 19) = 3.91, p < 0.05) for NaOCN relative to NaCN and saline treatments. The long-term working memory was significantly impaired by cyanide with fewer correct arm entries (F(2, 19) = 7.45, p < 0.01) and increased working memory errors (F(2, 19) = 9.35 p < 0.05) in NaCN relative to NaOCN or vehicle treated animals. Reference memory was not affected by either cyanide or cyanate. Our study findings provide an experimental evidence for the biological plausibility that cassava cyanogens may induce cognition deficits. Differential patterns of memory deficits may reflect the differences in toxicity mechanisms of NaOCN relative to NaCN. Cognition deficits associated with cassava cyanogenesis may reflect a dual toxicity effect of cyanide and cyanate.
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Egami, Chiyomi; Yamashita, Yushiro; Tada, Yasuhiro; Anai, Chiduru; Mukasa, Akiko; Yuge, Kotaro; Nagamitsu, Shinichiro; Matsuishi, Toyojiro
2015-10-01
The aim of this study was to investigate the developmental trajectories of attention, short-term memory, and working memory in school-aged children using a 10 min test battery of cognitive function. Participants comprised 144 typically developing children (TDC) aged 7-12 years and 24 healthy adults, divided according to age into seven groups (12 males and 12 females for each age group). Participants were assessed using CogHealth, which is a computer-based measure composed of five tasks. We measured attention, short-term memory, and working memory (WM) with visual stimulation. Each task was analyzed for age-related differences in reaction time and accuracy rate. Attention tasks were faster in stages from the age of 7-10 years. Accuracy rate of short-term memory gradually increased from 12 years of age and suddenly increased and continued to increase at 22 years of age. Accuracy rate of working memory increased until 12 years of age. Correlations were found between the ages and reaction time, and between ages and accuracy rate of the tasks. These results indicate that there were rapid improvements in attention, short-term memory, and WM performance between 7 and 10 years of age followed by gradual improvement until 12 years of age. Increase in short-term memory continued until 22 years of age. In our experience CogHealth was an easy and useful measure for the evaluation of cognitive function in school-age children. Copyright © 2015 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Memory deficits associated with sublethal cyanide poisoning relative to cyanate toxicity in rodents
Kimani, S.; Sinei, K.; Bukachi, F.; Tshala-Katumbay, D.; Maitai, C.
2014-01-01
Background Food (cassava) linamarin is metabolized into neurotoxicants cyanide and cyanate, metabolites of which we sought to elucidate the differential toxicity effects on memory. Methods Young 6-8 weeks old male rats were treated intraperitoneally with either 2.5 mg/kg body weight (bw) cyanide (NaCN), or 50 mg/kg bw cyanate (NaOCN), or 1 μl/g bw saline, daily for 6 weeks. Short-term and long-term memories were assessed using a radial arm maze (RAM) testing paradigm. Results Toxic exposures had an influence on short-term working memory with fewer correct arm entries (F 2, 19 = 4.57 p <0.05), higher working memory errors (WME) (F 2, 19 = 5.09, p <0.05) and longer RAM navigation time (F2, 19 = 3.91, p <0.05) for NaOCN relative to NaCN and saline treatments. The long-term working memory was significantly impaired by cyanide with fewer correct arm entries (F 2, 19 = 7.45, p <0.01) and increased working memory errors (F 2, 19 = 9.35 p <0.05) in NaCN relative to NaOCN or vehicle treated animals. Reference memory was not affected by either cyanide or cyanate. Conclusion Our study findings provide an experimental evidence for the biological plausibility that cassava cyanogens may induce cognition deficits. Differential patterns of memory deficits may reflect the differences in toxicity mechanisms of NaOCN relative to NaCN. Cognition deficits associated with cassava cyanogenesis may reflect a dual toxicity effect of cyanide and cyanate. PMID:24293006
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Shannon, H E; Bemis, K G; Hendrix, J C; Ward, J S
1990-12-01
The effects on working memory of the muscarinic cholinergic agonists oxotremorine, arecoline, RS86 and pilocarpine, and the cholinesterase inhibitors physostigmine and tetrahydroaminoacadine were investigated in male F344 rats. Working memory was assessed by behavior maintained under a spatial alternation schedule of food presentation in which the interval between trials was varied from 2 to 32 sec. Under control conditions the percentage of correct responses decreased as the retention interval was varied from 2 to 32 sec. Administered alone the cholinergic agonists oxotremorine (0.01-0.1 mg/kg), arecoline (3-30 mg/kg), RS86 (0.3-3 mg/kg) and pilocarpine (0.3-3.0 mg/kg), and the cholinesterase inhibitors physostigmine (0.01-0.1 mg/kg) and tetrahydroaminoacridine (0.3-3.0 mg/kg) either had no effect on or produced dose-related deficits in working memory and decreases in response rates. The muscarinic antagonist scopolamine (0.1 mg/kg) produced retention interval-dependent decreases in the percentage of correct responding and rates of responding. The cholinergic agonists and tetrahydroaminoacridine failed to reverse the effects of scopolamine. However, physostigmine produced a dose-dependent reversal of the working-memory deficits and response-rate decreasing effects of scopolamine. The present results are consistent with the interpretation that drugs which primarily enhance M2 muscarinic cholinergic transmission are ineffective in enhancing working memory or in reversing scopolamine-induced deficits in working memory.
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Jipp, Meike
2016-12-01
This study explored whether working memory and sustained attention influence cognitive lock-up, which is a delay in the response to consecutive automation failures. Previous research has demonstrated that the information that automation provides about failures and the time pressure that is associated with a task influence cognitive lock-up. Previous research has also demonstrated considerable variability in cognitive lock-up between participants. This is why individual differences might influence cognitive lock-up. The present study tested whether working memory-including flexibility in executive functioning-and sustained attention might be crucial in this regard. Eighty-five participants were asked to monitor automated aircraft functions. The experimental manipulation consisted of whether or not an initial automation failure was followed by a consecutive failure. Reaction times to the failures were recorded. Participants' working-memory and sustained-attention abilities were assessed with standardized tests. As expected, participants' reactions to consecutive failures were slower than their reactions to initial failures. In addition, working-memory and sustained-attention abilities enhanced the speed with which participants reacted to failures, more so with regard to consecutive than to initial failures. The findings highlight that operators with better working memory and sustained attention have small advantages when initial failures occur, but their advantages increase across consecutive failures. The results stress the need to consider personnel selection strategies to mitigate cognitive lock-up in general and training procedures to enhance the performance of low ability operators. © 2016, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
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Sari, Berna A; Koster, Ernst H W; Pourtois, Gilles; Derakshan, Nazanin
2016-12-01
Trait anxiety is associated with impairments in attentional control and processing efficiency (see Berggren & Derakshan, 2013, for a review). Working memory training using the adaptive dual n-back task has shown to improve attentional control in subclinical depression with transfer effects at the behavioral and neural level on a working memory task (Owens, Koster, & Derakshan, 2013). Here, we examined the beneficial effects of working memory training on attentional control in pre-selected high trait anxious individuals who underwent a three week daily training intervention using the adaptive dual n-back task. Pre and post outcome measures of attentional control were assessed using a Flanker task that included a stress induction and an emotional a Antisaccade task (with angry and neutral faces as target). Resting state EEG (theta/beta ratio) was recorded to as a neural marker of trait attentional control. Our results showed that adaptive working memory training improved attentional control with transfer effects on the Flanker task and resting state EEG, but effects of training on the Antisaccade task were less conclusive. Finally, training related gains were associated with lower levels of trait anxiety at post (vs pre) intervention. Our results demonstrate that adaptive working memory training in anxiety can have beneficial effects on attentional control and cognitive performance that may protect against emotional vulnerability in individuals at risk of developing clinical anxiety. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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The role of executive functioning in memory performance in pediatric focal epilepsy.
Sepeta, Leigh N; Casaletto, Kaitlin Blackstone; Terwilliger, Virginia; Facella-Ervolini, Joy; Sady, Maegan; Mayo, Jessica; Gaillard, William D; Berl, Madison M
2017-02-01
Learning and memory are essential for academic success and everyday functioning, but the pattern of memory skills and its relationship to executive functioning in children with focal epilepsy is not fully delineated. We address a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between memory and executive functioning in a pediatric focal epilepsy population. Seventy children with focal epilepsy and 70 typically developing children matched on age, intellectual functioning, and gender underwent neuropsychological assessment, including measures of intelligence (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence [WASI]/Differential Ability Scales [DAS]), as well as visual Children's Memory Scale (CMS Dot Locations) and verbal episodic memory (Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning [WRAML] Story Memory and California Verbal Learning Test for Children [CVLT-C]). Executive functioning was measured directly (WISC-IV Digit Span Backward; Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Fourth Edition (CELF-IV) Recalling Sentences) and by parent report (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function [BRIEF]). Children with focal epilepsy had lower delayed free-recall scores than controls across visual and verbal memory tasks (p = 0.02; partial η 2 = 0.12). In contrast, recognition memory performance was similar for patients and controls (p = 0.36; partial η 2 = 0.03). Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated difficulties in working memory (p = 0.02; partial η 2 = 0.08) and planning/organization (p = 0.02) compared to controls. Working memory predicted 9-19% of the variance in delayed free recall for verbal and visual memory; organization predicted 9-10% of the variance in verbal memory. Patients with both left and right focal epilepsy demonstrated more difficulty on verbal versus visual tasks (p = 0.002). Memory performance did not differ by location of seizure foci (temporal vs. extratemporal, frontal vs. extrafrontal). Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated memory ability within age-level expectations, but delayed free recall was inefficient compared to typically developing controls. Memory difficulties were not related to general cognitive impairment or seizure localization. Executive functioning accounted for significant variance in memory performance, suggesting that poor executive control negatively influences memory retrieval. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 International League Against Epilepsy.
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Robinson, L; Goonawardena, A V; Pertwee, R G; Hampson, R E; Riedel, G
2007-07-01
Previous work implied that the hippocampal cannabinoid system was particularly important in some forms of learning, but direct evidence for this hypothesis is scarce. We therefore assessed the effects of the synthetic cannabinoid HU210 on memory and hippocampal activity. HU210 (100 microg kg(-1)) was administered intraperitoneally to rats under three experimental conditions. One group of animals were pre-trained in spatial working memory using a delayed-matching-to-position task and effects of HU210 were assessed in a within-subject design. In another, rats were injected before acquisition learning of a spatial reference memory task with constant platform location. Finally, a separate group of animals was implanted with electrode bundles in CA1 and CA3 and single unit responses were isolated, before and after HU210 treatment. HU210 treatment had no effect on working or short-term memory. Relative to its control Tween 80, deficits in acquisition of a reference memory version of the water maze were obtained, along with drug-related effects on anxiety, motor activity and spatial learning. Deficits were not reversed by the CB(1) receptor antagonists SR141716A (3 mg kg(-1)) or AM281 (1.5 mg kg(-1)). Single unit recordings from principal neurons in hippocampal CA3 and CA1 confirmed HU210-induced attenuation of the overall firing activity lowering both the number of complex spikes fired and the occurrence of bursts. These data provide the first direct evidence that the underlying mechanism for the spatial memory deficits induced by HU210 in rats is the accompanying abnormality in hippocampal cell firing.
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Gareau, Alexandre; Gaudreau, Patrick
2017-11-01
In previous research, autonomous motivation (AM) has been found to be associated with school achievement, but the relation has been largely heterogeneous across studies. AM has typically been assessed with explicit measures such as self-report questionnaires. Recent self-determination theory (SDT) research has suggested that converging implicit and explicit measures can be taken to characterize the integrative process in SDT. Drawing from dual-process theories, we contended that explicit AM is likely to promote school achievement when it is part of an integrated cognitive system that combines easily accessible mental representations (i.e., implicit AM) and efficient executive functioning. A sample of 272 university students completed a questionnaire and a lexical decision task to assess their explicit and implicit AM, respectively, and they also completed working memory capacity measures. Grades were obtained at the end of the semester to examine the short-term prospective effect of implicit and explicit AM, working memory, and their interaction. Results of moderation analyses have provided support for a synergistic interaction in which the association between explicit AM and academic achievement was positive and significant only for individuals with high level of implicit AM. Moreover, working memory was moderating the synergistic effect of explicit and implicit AM. Explicit AM was positively associated with academic achievement for students with average-to-high levels of working memory capacity, but only if their motivation operated synergistically with high implicit AM. The integrative process thus seems to hold better proprieties for achievement than the sole effect of explicit AM. Implications for SDT are outlined. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.
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Mulder, Hanna; Pitchford, Nicola J; Marlow, Neil
2011-03-01
BACKGROUND. Problem behaviour is common following pre-term birth, but the underlying nature of these difficulties is not well known. AIMS. We sought to establish the mechanisms underpinning behavioural difficulties in very pre-term (VPT) children in middle childhood by comparing their performance to that of term born peers on tasks of working memory, inhibition, and processing speed, and relating these to parent and teacher assessments of their behaviour. Particular focus was given to inattention and overactive/impulsive behaviour, as these behaviours have been associated with different neuropsychological problems in term children. SAMPLES. A group of VPT children (gestational age < 31 weeks, N= 56) aged 9-10 years and term controls (N= 22) participated in the study. METHOD. Children were assessed with measures of working memory, inhibition, and processing speed. Parents and teachers reported behavioural problems using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and two additional scales measuring overactive/impulsive behaviour and inattention. RESULTS. Results revealed increased rates of problem behaviour in VPT compared to term children for parent-rated total difficulties, hyperactivity, emotional problems, peer problems, prosocial behaviour, overactive/impulsive behaviour, and parent- and teacher-rated inattention. Processing speed and working memory, but not inhibition, were significantly related to inattentive and overactive/impulsive behaviour. CONCLUSIONS. The increased rates of inattention and overactive/impulsive behaviour in VPT children may be explained by impairment in processing speed and working memory. Expected links between overactive/impulsive behaviour and inhibitory control were not identified, suggesting the nature of such difficulties may be different in VPT compared to term children. © 2010 The British Psychological Society.
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The allocation of attention and working memory in visual crowding.
Bacigalupo, Felix; Luck, Steven J
2015-06-01
When the distance between a visual target and nearby flankers falls below a critical distance, target discrimination declines precipitously. This is called "crowding." Many researchers have proposed that selective attention plays a role in crowding. However, although some research has examined the effects of directing attention toward versus away from the targets, no previous research has assessed how attentional allocation varies as a function of target-flanker distance in crowding. Here, we used ERPs to assess the operation of attention during crowding, focusing on the attention-related N2pc component. We used a typical crowding task in which participants were asked to report the category (vowel/consonant) of a lateralized target letter flanked by distractor letters at different distances. We tested the hypothesis that attention fails when the target-flanker distance becomes too small for attention to operate effectively. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that N2pc amplitude was maximal at intermediate target-flanker distances and decreased substantially when crowding became severe. In addition, we examined the sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN), which reflects the amount of information being maintained in working memory. Unlike the N2pc component, the SPCN increased in amplitude at small target-flanker distances, suggesting that observers stored information about the target and flankers in working memory when attention failed to select the target. Together, the N2pc and SPCN results suggest that attention and working memory play distinctive roles in crowding: Attention operates to minimize interference from the flankers at intermediate target-flanker distances, whereas working memory may be recruited when attention fails to select the target at small target-flanker distances.
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Obesity and unhealthy lifestyle associated with poor executive function among Malaysian adolescents.
Tee, Joyce Ying Hui; Gan, Wan Ying; Tan, Kit-Aun; Chin, Yit Siew
2018-01-01
The understanding on the roles of obesity and lifestyle behaviors in predicting executive function of adolescents has been limited. Low executive function proficiency may have adverse effects on adolescents' school academic performance. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the relationship between BMI-for-age and multiple lifestyle behaviors (operationalized as meal consumption, physical activity, and sleep quality) with executive function (operationalized as inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) on a sample of Malaysian adolescents aged between 12 and 16 years (N = 513). Participants were recruited from two randomly selected schools in the state of Selangor in Malaysia. Using a self-administered questionnaire, parent participants provided information concerning their sociodemographic data, whereas adolescent participants provided information regarding their meal consumptions, physical activity, and sleep quality. The modified Harvard step test was used to assess adolescents' aerobic fitness, while Stroop color-word, digit span, and trail-making tests were used to assess adolescents' inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, respectively. Three separate hierarchical regression analyses were conducted for each outcome namely, inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. After adjusted for sociodemographic factors and BMI-for-age, differential predictors of inhibition and working memory were found. Habitual sleep efficiency significantly and positively predicted inhibition. Regular dinner intakes, physical activity levels, and sleep quality significantly and positively predicted working memory. Household income emerged as a consistent predictor for all executive function domains. In conclusion, an increased trend of obesity and unhealthy lifestyles among adolescents were found to be associated with poorer executive function. Regular dinner intakes, higher physical activity levels and better sleep quality predicted better executive function despite the inverse relationship between obesity and executive function. Future studies may explore how lifestyle modifications can optimize the development of executive function in adolescents as well as relieve the burden of obesity.
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Chung, Sung Wook; Rogasch, Nigel C; Hoy, Kate E; Fitzgerald, Paul B
With an increasing interest in the use of theta burst stimulation (TBS) as a cognitive enhancer and a potential therapeutic tool for psychiatric disorders, there is a need to identify optimal parameters of TBS in the prefrontal cortex. This study examined the effect of two blocks of prefrontal intermittent TBS (iTBS) on cortical reactivity and working memory performance, compared to one block of iTBS and sham stimulation. We hypothesized that greater cortical effects would be obtained with two blocks of iTBS. Eighteen healthy participants attended three experimental sessions and received either sham, one block or two blocks of iTBS with a 15-min interval. Concurrent transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) was used to assess the change in cortical reactivity via TMS-evoked potentials. Working memory performance was assessed using the N-back task. Cluster-based permutation statistics and two-way ANOVAs were used for neurophysiological and behavioural data, respectively. Both single and two blocks of iTBS resulted in a significant increase in the amplitude of TMS-evoked N100 and P200. No significant differences were observed between active conditions in either neurophysiological changes or working memory performance, and both failed to improve working memory performance relative to sham. Two blocks of iTBS did not result in stronger measured effects as compared to one block of iTBS. Future studies are needed to identify the optimal stimulation pattern in order to achieve a desired effect. It is also important to establish the best approach in quantifying neuromodulatory effects targeting the prefrontal cortex. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Thalamic Activation in the Kleine-Levin Syndrome
Engström, Maria; Karlsson, Thomas; Landtblom, Anne-Marie
2014-01-01
Study Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate if combined measures of activation in the thalamus and working memory capacity could guide the diagnosis of Kleine-Levin Syndrome (KLS). A second objective was to obtain more insight into the neurobiological causes of KLS. Design: Matched group and consecutive recruitment. Setting: University hospital neurology department and imaging center. Patients or Participants: Eighteen patients with KLS diagnosed according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders and 26 healthy controls were included. Interventions: N/A. Measurements and Results: Working memory capacity was assessed by the listening span task. A version of this task (reading span) was presented to the participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Activation in the thalamus was measured in a region of interest analysis. A combination of the working memory capacity and the thalamic activation measures resulted in 80% prediction accuracy, 81% sensitivity, and 78% specificity regarding the ability to separate KLS patients from healthy controls. The controls had an inverse relation between working memory capacity and thalamic activation; higher performing participants had lower thalamic activation (r = -0.41). KLS patients showed the opposite relationship; higher performing participants had a tendency to higher thalamic activation (r = -0.35). Conclusions: This study shows that functional neuroimaging of the thalamus combined with neuropsychological assessment of working memory function provides a means to guide diagnosis of Kleine-Levin Syndrome. Results in this study also indicate that imaging of brain function and evaluation of cognitive capacity can give insights into the neurobiological mechanisms of Kleine-Levin Syndrome. Citation: Engström M; Karlsson T; Landtblom AM. Thalamic activation in the Kleine-Levin Syndrome. SLEEP 2014;37(2):379-386. PMID:24497666
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Piccardi, Laura; Matano, Alessandro; D’Antuono, Giovanni; Marin, Dario; Ciurli, Paola; Incoccia, Chiara; Verde, Paola; Guariglia, Paola
2016-01-01
The aim of the present study was to verify if gender differences in verbal and visuo-spatial working memory would persist following right cerebral lesions. To pursue our aim we investigated a large sample (n. 346) of right brain-damaged patients and healthy participants (n. 272) for the presence of gender effects in performing Corsi and Digit Test. We also assessed a subgroup of patients (n. 109) for the nature (active vs. passive) of working memory tasks. We tested working memory (WM) administering the Corsi Test (CBT) and the Digit Span (DS) using two different versions: forward (fCBT and fDS), subjects were required to repeat stimuli in the same order that they were presented; and backward (bCBT and bDS), subjects were required to repeat stimuli in the opposite order of presentation. In this way, passive storage and active processing of working memory were assessed. Our results showed the persistence of gender-related effects in spite of the presence of right brain lesions. We found that men outperformed women both in CBT and DS, regardless of active and passive processing of verbal and visuo-spatial stimuli. The presence of visuo-spatial disorders (i.e., hemineglect) can affect the performance on Corsi Test. In our sample, men and women were equally affected by hemineglect, therefore it did not mask the gender effect. Generally speaking, the persistence of the men’s superiority in visuo-spatial tasks may be interpreted as a protective factor, at least for men, within other life factors such as level of education or kind of profession before retirement. PMID:27445734
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Ivanova, Maria V; Hallowell, Brooke
2014-01-01
Deficits in working memory (WM) are an important subset of cognitive processing deficits associated with aphasia. However, there are serious limitations to research on WM in aphasia largely due to the lack of an established valid measure of WM impairment for this population. The aim of the current study was to address shortcomings of previous measures by developing and empirically evaluating a novel WM task with a sentence-picture matching processing component designed to circumvent confounds inherent in existing measures of WM in aphasia. The novel WM task was presented to persons with (n=27) and without (n=33) aphasia. Results demonstrated high concurrent validity of a novel WM task. Individuals with aphasia performed significantly worse on all conditions of the WM task compared to individuals without aphasia. Different patterns of performance across conditions were observed for the two groups. Additionally, WM capacity was significantly related to auditory comprehension abilities in individuals with mild aphasia but not those with moderate aphasia. Strengths of the novel WM task are that it allows for differential control for length versus complexity of verbal stimuli and indexing of the relative influence of each, minimizes metalinguistic requirements, enables control for complexity of processing components, allows participants to respond with simple gestures or verbally, and eliminates reading requirements. Results support the feasibility and validity of using a novel task to assess WM in individuals with and without aphasia. Readers will be able to (1) discuss the limitations of current working memory measures for individuals with aphasia; (2) describe how task design features of a new working memory task for people with aphasia address shortcomings of existing measures; (3) summarize the evidence supporting the validity of the novel working memory task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Assessing Working Memory in Mild Cognitive Impairment with Serial Order Recall.
Emrani, Sheina; Libon, David J; Lamar, Melissa; Price, Catherine C; Jefferson, Angela L; Gifford, Katherine A; Hohman, Timothy J; Nation, Daniel A; Delano-Wood, Lisa; Jak, Amy; Bangen, Katherine J; Bondi, Mark W; Brickman, Adam M; Manly, Jennifer; Swenson, Rodney; Au, Rhoda
2018-01-01
Working memory (WM) is often assessed with serial order tests such as repeating digits backward. In prior dementia research using the Backward Digit Span Test (BDT), only aggregate test performance was examined. The current research tallied primacy/recency effects, out-of-sequence transposition errors, perseverations, and omissions to assess WM deficits in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Memory clinic patients (n = 66) were classified into three groups: single domain amnestic MCI (aMCI), combined mixed domain/dysexecutive MCI (mixed/dys MCI), and non-MCI where patients did not meet criteria for MCI. Serial order/WM ability was assessed by asking participants to repeat 7 trials of five digits backwards. Serial order position accuracy, transposition errors, perseverations, and omission errors were tallied. A 3 (group)×5 (serial position) repeated measures ANOVA yielded a significant group×trial interaction. Follow-up analyses found attenuation of the recency effect for mixed/dys MCI patients. Mixed/dys MCI patients scored lower than non-MCI patients for serial position 3 (p < 0.003) serial position 4 (p < 0.002); and lower than both group for serial position 5 (recency; p < 0.002). Mixed/dys MCI patients also produced more transposition errors than both groups (p < 0.010); and more omissions (p < 0.020), and perseverations errors (p < 0.018) than non-MCI patients. The attenuation of a recency effect using serial order parameters obtained from the BDT may provide a useful operational definition as well as additional diagnostic information regarding working memory deficits in MCI.
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Distractor devaluation requires visual working memory.
Goolsby, Brian A; Shapiro, Kimron L; Raymond, Jane E
2009-02-01
Visual stimuli seen previously as distractors in a visual search task are subsequently evaluated more negatively than those seen as targets. An attentional inhibition account for this distractor-devaluation effect posits that associative links between attentional inhibition and to-be-ignored stimuli are established during search, stored, and then later reinstantiated, implying that distractor devaluation may require visual working memory (WM) resources. To assess this, we measured distractor devaluation with and without a concurrent visual WM load. Participants viewed a memory array, performed a simple search task, evaluated one of the search items (or a novel item), and then viewed a memory test array. Although distractor devaluation was observed with low (and no) WM load, it was absent when WM load was increased. This result supports the notions that active association of current attentional states with stimuli requires WM and that memory for these associations plays a role in affective response.
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Riva, Valentina; Cantiani, Chiara; Dionne, Ginette; Marini, Andrea; Mascheretti, Sara; Molteni, Massimo; Marino, Cecilia
2017-07-01
This study tested the role of temporary memory, measured by phonological short-term memory (pSTM) and verbal working memory (vWM), as a mediator of the effect of 3 putative risk factors (i.e., socioeconomic status, home literacy environment, birth gestational age) upon expressive and receptive language. A community-based sample of 646 Italian children aged 6-11 years was assessed with a comprehensive battery of language and cognitive tests. A mediation analysis was used to examine whether memory mediates environmental/biological effects on language. The results demonstrated a developmental cascade of effects, whereby the duration of pregnancy drives vWM functioning that, in turn, may affect expressive linguistic outcome Conclusion: Treatments focused on vWM, specifically to preterm children, may improve their language development, with enduring consequences on educational and psychosocial outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Nyberg, Claudia Kim; Nordvik, Jan Egil; Becker, Frank; Rohani, Darius A; Sederevicius, Donatas; Fjell, Anders M; Walhovd, Kristine B
2018-05-01
Background Computerized cognitive training is suggested to enhance attention and working memory functioning following stroke, but effects on brain and behavior are not sufficiently studied and longitudinal studies assessing brain and behavior relationships are scarce. Objective The study objectives were to investigate relations between neuropsychological performance post-stroke and white matter microstructure measures derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), including changes after 6 weeks of working memory training. Methods In this experimental training study, 26 stroke patients underwent DTI and neuropsychological tests at 3 time points - before and after a passive phase of 6 weeks, and again after 6 weeks of working memory training (Cogmed QM). Fractional anisotropy (FA) was extracted from stroke-free brain areas to assess the white matter microstructure. Twenty-two participants completed the majority of training (≥18/25 sessions) and were entered into longitudinal analyses. Results Significant correlations between FA and baseline cognitive functions were observed (r = 0.58, p = 0.004), however, no evidence was found of generally improved cognitive functions following training or of changes in white matter microstructure. Conclusions While white matter microstructure related to baseline cognitive function in stroke patients, the study revealed no effect on cognitive functions or microstructural changes in white matter in relation to computerized working memory training.
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Enhancing Spatial Attention and Working Memory in Younger and Older Adults
Rolle, Camarin E.; Anguera, Joaquin A.; Skinner, Sasha N.; Voytek, Bradley; Gazzaley, Adam
2018-01-01
Daily experiences demand both focused and broad allocation of attention for us to interact efficiently with our complex environments. Many types of attention have shown age-related decline, although there is also evidence that such deficits may be remediated with cognitive training. However, spatial attention abilities have shown inconsistent age-related differences, and the extent of potential enhancement of these abilities remains unknown. Here, we assessed spatial attention in both healthy younger and older adults and trained this ability in both age groups for 5 hr over the course of 2 weeks using a custom-made, computerized mobile training application. We compared training-related gains on a spatial attention assessment and spatial working memory task to age-matched controls who engaged in expectancy-matched, active placebo computerized training. Age-related declines in spatial attention abilities were observed regardless of task difficulty. Spatial attention training led to improved focused and distributed attention abilities as well as improved spatial working memory in both younger and older participants. No such improvements were observed in either of the age-matched control groups. Note that these findings were not a function of improvements in simple response time, as basic motoric function did not change after training. Furthermore, when using change in simple response time as a covariate, all findings remained significant. These results suggest that spatial attention training can lead to enhancements in spatial working memory regardless of age. PMID:28654361
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Facial expression perception correlates with verbal working memory function in schizophrenia.
Hagiya, Kumiko; Sumiyoshi, Tomiki; Kanie, Ayako; Pu, Shenghong; Kaneko, Koichi; Mogami, Tamiko; Oshima, Sachie; Niwa, Shin-ichi; Inagaki, Akiko; Ikebuchi, Emi; Kikuchi, Akiko; Yamasaki, Syudo; Iwata, Kazuhiko; Nakagome, Kazuyuki
2015-12-01
Facial emotion perception is considered to provide a measure of social cognition. Numerous studies have examined the perception of emotion in patients with schizophrenia, and the majority has reported impaired ability to recognize facial emotion perception. We aimed to investigate the correlation between facial expression recognition and other domains of social cognition and neurocognition in Japanese patients with schizophrenia. Participants were 52 patients with schizophrenia and 53 normal controls with no history of psychiatric diseases. All participants completed the Hinting Task and the Social Cognition Screening Questionnaire. The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was administered only to the patients. Facial emotion perception measured by the Facial Emotion Selection Test (FEST) was compared between the patients and normal controls. Patients performed significantly worse on the FEST compared to normal control subjects. The FEST total score was significantly positively correlated with scores of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia attention subscale, Hinting Task, Social Cognition Screening Questionnaire Verbal Working Memory and Metacognition subscales. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that verbal working memory function was positively related to the facial emotion perception ability in patients with schizophrenia. These results point to the concept that facial emotion perception and some types of working memory use common cognitive resources. Our findings may provide implications for cognitive rehabilitation and related interventions in schizophrenia. © 2015 The Authors. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences © 2015 Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology.
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Working Memory Contributions to Reinforcement Learning Impairments in Schizophrenia
Brown, Jaime K.; Gold, James M.; Waltz, James A.; Frank, Michael J.
2014-01-01
Previous research has shown that patients with schizophrenia are impaired in reinforcement learning tasks. However, behavioral learning curves in such tasks originate from the interaction of multiple neural processes, including the basal ganglia- and dopamine-dependent reinforcement learning (RL) system, but also prefrontal cortex-dependent cognitive strategies involving working memory (WM). Thus, it is unclear which specific system induces impairments in schizophrenia. We recently developed a task and computational model allowing us to separately assess the roles of RL (slow, cumulative learning) mechanisms versus WM (fast but capacity-limited) mechanisms in healthy adult human subjects. Here, we used this task to assess patients' specific sources of impairments in learning. In 15 separate blocks, subjects learned to pick one of three actions for stimuli. The number of stimuli to learn in each block varied from two to six, allowing us to separate influences of capacity-limited WM from the incremental RL system. As expected, both patients (n = 49) and healthy controls (n = 36) showed effects of set size and delay between stimulus repetitions, confirming the presence of working memory effects. Patients performed significantly worse than controls overall, but computational model fits and behavioral analyses indicate that these deficits could be entirely accounted for by changes in WM parameters (capacity and reliability), whereas RL processes were spared. These results suggest that the working memory system contributes strongly to learning impairments in schizophrenia. PMID:25297101
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Enhancing Spatial Attention and Working Memory in Younger and Older Adults.
Rolle, Camarin E; Anguera, Joaquin A; Skinner, Sasha N; Voytek, Bradley; Gazzaley, Adam
2017-09-01
Daily experiences demand both focused and broad allocation of attention for us to interact efficiently with our complex environments. Many types of attention have shown age-related decline, although there is also evidence that such deficits may be remediated with cognitive training. However, spatial attention abilities have shown inconsistent age-related differences, and the extent of potential enhancement of these abilities remains unknown. Here, we assessed spatial attention in both healthy younger and older adults and trained this ability in both age groups for 5 hr over the course of 2 weeks using a custom-made, computerized mobile training application. We compared training-related gains on a spatial attention assessment and spatial working memory task to age-matched controls who engaged in expectancy-matched, active placebo computerized training. Age-related declines in spatial attention abilities were observed regardless of task difficulty. Spatial attention training led to improved focused and distributed attention abilities as well as improved spatial working memory in both younger and older participants. No such improvements were observed in either of the age-matched control groups. Note that these findings were not a function of improvements in simple response time, as basic motoric function did not change after training. Furthermore, when using change in simple response time as a covariate, all findings remained significant. These results suggest that spatial attention training can lead to enhancements in spatial working memory regardless of age.
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Mossaheb, Nilufar; Kaufmann, Rainer M; Schlögelhofer, Monika; Aninilkumparambil, Thushara; Himmelbauer, Claudia; Gold, Anna; Zehetmayer, Sonja; Hoffmann, Holger; Traue, Harald C; Aschauer, Harald
2018-01-01
Social interactive functions such as facial emotion recognition and smell identification have been shown to differ between women and men. However, little is known about how these differences are mirrored in patients with schizophrenia and how these abilities interact with each other and with other clinical variables in patients vs. healthy controls. Standardized instruments were used to assess facial emotion recognition [Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling (FEEL)] and smell identification [University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT)] in 51 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and 79 healthy controls; furthermore, working memory functions and clinical variables were assessed. In both the univariate and the multivariate results, illness showed a significant influence on UPSIT and FEEL. The inclusion of age and working memory in the MANOVA resulted in a differential effect with sex and working memory as remaining significant factors. Duration of illness was correlated with both emotion recognition and smell identification in men only, whereas immediate general psychopathology and negative symptoms were associated with emotion recognition only in women. Being affected by schizophrenia spectrum disorder impacts one's ability to correctly recognize facial affects and identify odors. Converging evidence suggests a link between the investigated basic and social cognitive abilities in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders with a strong contribution of working memory and differential effects of modulators in women vs. men.
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Gaillardin, Florence; Baudry, Stéphane
2018-06-01
This study assessed the influence of attention division, working memory and executive function on stair ascent and descent in young and older adults. Twenty young (25.5 ± 2.1 yrs) and 20 older adults (68.4 ± 5.4 yrs) ascended and descended a 3-step staircase with no simultaneous cognitive task (single-motor task) or while performing a cognitive task (dual-task condition). The cognitive task involved either 1) recalling a word list of the subject's word-span minus 2 words (SPAN-2) to assess the attention division effect, 2) a word list of subject's word-span (SPAN-O) to assess the working memory effect, or 3) recalling in alphabetical order, a word list of the subject's word-span (SPAN-A) to assess the executive function effect. Word-span corresponds to the longest string of words that can be recalled correctly. The duration of ascent and descent of stairs was used to assess the cognitive-motor interaction. Stair ascent and descent duration did not differ between age groups for the single-motor task, and was similar between single-motor task and SPAN-2 in both groups (p > 0.05). In contrast, stair ascent and descent duration increased with SPAN-O compared with SPAN-2 for both groups (p < 0.01). Stair ascent (p = 0.017) and descent (p = 0.008) were longer in SPAN-A than SPAN-O only in older adults. Healthy aging was not associated with a decrease in the capacity to perform motor-cognitive dual tasks that involved ascending and descending of stairs when the cognitive task only required working memory. However, the decrease in dual-task performance involving executive functioning may reflect a subclinical cognitive decline in healthy older adults. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Mackenzie, Corey S; Wiprzycka, Ursula J; Hasher, Lynn; Goldstein, David
2009-11-01
Family caregivers of older adults experience high levels of chronic stress and psychological distress, which are known to impair cognition. Very little research, however, has assessed the impact of caregiving on key cognitive outcomes such as learning and memory. This study compared 16 spouse caregivers with 16 matched controls using standardized neuropsychological measures of learning, episodic memory, and working memory. Analyses compared groups on these cognitive outcomes and examined whether psychological distress mediated group differences in cognition. Results indicated that caregivers were significantly more distressed than non-caregivers and exhibited deficits in learning, recall of episodic information after short and long delays, and working memory. Furthermore, the majority of group differences in cognitive outcomes were mediated by psychological distress. This study adds to a small body of literature demonstrating impaired cognitive functioning among family caregivers. It also suggests that distress is one of a number of possible underlying mechanisms leading to disruptions in learning and memory in this population.
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Soto, David; Humphreys, Glyn W
2009-01-01
Recent research has shown that the contents of working memory (WM) can guide the early deployment of attention in visual search. Here, we assessed whether this guidance occurred for all attributes of items held in WM, or whether effects are based on just the attributes relevant for the memory task. We asked observers to hold in memory just the shape of a coloured object and to subsequently search for a target line amongst distractor lines, each embedded within a different object. On some trials, one of the objects in the search display could match the shape, the colour or both dimensions of the cue, but this object never contained the relevant target line. Relative to a neutral baseline, where there was no match between the memory and the search displays, search performance was impaired when a distractor object matched both the colour and the shape of the memory cue. The implications for the understanding of the interaction between WM and selection are discussed.
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Moberly, Aaron C; Harris, Michael S; Boyce, Lauren; Nittrouer, Susan
2017-04-14
Models of speech recognition suggest that "top-down" linguistic and cognitive functions, such as use of phonotactic constraints and working memory, facilitate recognition under conditions of degradation, such as in noise. The question addressed in this study was what happens to these functions when a listener who has experienced years of hearing loss obtains a cochlear implant. Thirty adults with cochlear implants and 30 age-matched controls with age-normal hearing underwent testing of verbal working memory using digit span and serial recall of words. Phonological capacities were assessed using a lexical decision task and nonword repetition. Recognition of words in sentences in speech-shaped noise was measured. Implant users had only slightly poorer working memory accuracy than did controls and only on serial recall of words; however, phonological sensitivity was highly impaired. Working memory did not facilitate speech recognition in noise for either group. Phonological sensitivity predicted sentence recognition for implant users but not for listeners with normal hearing. Clinical speech recognition outcomes for adult implant users relate to the ability of these users to process phonological information. Results suggest that phonological capacities may serve as potential clinical targets through rehabilitative training. Such novel interventions may be particularly helpful for older adult implant users.
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Charlton, R A; Schiavone, F; Barrick, T R; Morris, R G; Markus, H S
2010-01-01
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a sensitive method for detecting white matter damage, and in cross sectional studies DTI measures correlate with age related cognitive decline. However, there are few data on whether DTI can detect age related changes over short time periods and whether such change correlates with cognitive function. In a community sample of 84 middle-aged and elderly adults, MRI and cognitive testing were performed at baseline and after 2 years. Changes in DTI white matter histograms, white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume and brain volume were determined. Change over time in performance on tests of executive function, working memory and information processing speed were also assessed. Significant change in all MRI measures was detected. For cognition, change was detected for working memory and this correlated with change in DTI only. In a stepwise regression, with change in working memory as the dependent variable, a DTI histogram measure explained 10.8% of the variance in working memory. Change in WMH or brain volume did not contribute to the model. DTI is sensitive to age related change in white matter ultrastructure and appears useful for monitoring age related white matter change even over short time periods.
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Kuhn, Jörg-Tobias; Ise, Elena; Raddatz, Julia; Schwenk, Christin; Dobel, Christian
2016-09-01
Deficits in basic numerical skills, calculation, and working memory have been found in children with developmental dyscalculia (DD) as well as children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This paper investigates cognitive profiles of children with DD and/or ADHD symptoms (AS) in a double dissociation design to obtain a better understanding of the comorbidity of DD and ADHD. Children with DD-only (N = 33), AS-only (N = 16), comorbid DD+AS (N = 20), and typically developing controls (TD, N = 40) were assessed on measures of basic numerical processing, calculation, working memory, processing speed, and neurocognitive measures of attention. Children with DD (DD, DD+AS) showed deficits in all basic numerical skills, calculation, working memory, and sustained attention. Children with AS (AS, DD+AS) displayed more selective difficulties in dot enumeration, subtraction, verbal working memory, and processing speed. Also, they generally performed more poorly in neurocognitive measures of attention, especially alertness. Children with DD+AS mostly showed an additive combination of the deficits associated with DD-only and A_Sonly, except for subtraction tasks, in which they were less impaired than expected. DD and AS appear to be related to largely distinct patterns of cognitive deficits, which are present in combination in children with DD+AS.
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Harris, Michael S.; Boyce, Lauren; Nittrouer, Susan
2017-01-01
Purpose Models of speech recognition suggest that “top-down” linguistic and cognitive functions, such as use of phonotactic constraints and working memory, facilitate recognition under conditions of degradation, such as in noise. The question addressed in this study was what happens to these functions when a listener who has experienced years of hearing loss obtains a cochlear implant. Method Thirty adults with cochlear implants and 30 age-matched controls with age-normal hearing underwent testing of verbal working memory using digit span and serial recall of words. Phonological capacities were assessed using a lexical decision task and nonword repetition. Recognition of words in sentences in speech-shaped noise was measured. Results Implant users had only slightly poorer working memory accuracy than did controls and only on serial recall of words; however, phonological sensitivity was highly impaired. Working memory did not facilitate speech recognition in noise for either group. Phonological sensitivity predicted sentence recognition for implant users but not for listeners with normal hearing. Conclusion Clinical speech recognition outcomes for adult implant users relate to the ability of these users to process phonological information. Results suggest that phonological capacities may serve as potential clinical targets through rehabilitative training. Such novel interventions may be particularly helpful for older adult implant users. PMID:28384805
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Working memory constraints on the processing of syntactic ambiguity.
MacDonald, M C; Just, M A; Carpenter, P A
1992-01-01
We propose a model that explains how the working-memory capacity of a comprehender can constrain syntactic parsing and thereby affect the processing of syntactic ambiguities. The model's predictions are examined in four experiments that measure the reading times for two constructions that contain a temporary syntactic ambiguity. An example of the syntactic ambiguity is The soldiers warned about the dangers . . . ; the verb warned may either be the main verb, in which case soldiers is the agent; or the verb warned may introduce a relative clause, in which case soldiers is the patient of warned rather than the agent, as in The soldiers warned about the dangers conducted the midnight raid. The model proposes that both alternative interpretations of warned are initially activated. However, the duration for which both interpretations are maintained depends, in part, on the reader's working-memory capacity, which can be assessed by the Reading Span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). The word-by-word reading times indicate that all subjects do additional processing after encountering an ambiguity, suggesting that they generate both representations. Furthermore, readers with larger working-memory capacities maintain both representations for some period of time (several words), whereas readers with smaller working-memory capacities revert to maintaining only the more likely representation.
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Auditory verbal memory and psychosocial symptoms are related in children with idiopathic epilepsy.
Schaffer, Yael; Ben Zeev, Bruria; Cohen, Roni; Shuper, Avinoam; Geva, Ronny
2015-07-01
Idiopathic epilepsies are considered to have relatively good prognoses and normal or near normal developmental outcomes. Nevertheless, accumulating studies demonstrate memory and psychosocial deficits in this population, and the prevalence, severity and relationships between these domains are still not well defined. We aimed to assess memory, psychosocial function, and the relationships between these two domains among children with idiopathic epilepsy syndromes using an extended neuropsychological battery and psychosocial questionnaires. Cognitive abilities, neuropsychological performance, and socioemotional behavior of 33 early adolescent children, diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy, ages 9-14years, were assessed and compared with 27 age- and education-matched healthy controls. Compared to controls, patients with stabilized idiopathic epilepsy exhibited higher risks for short-term memory deficits (auditory verbal and visual) (p<0.0001), working memory deficits (p<0.003), auditory verbal long-term memory deficits (p<0.0021), and more frequent psychosocial symptoms (p<0.0001). The severity of auditory verbal memory deficits was related to severity of psychosocial symptoms among the children with epilepsy but not in the healthy controls. Results suggest that deficient auditory verbal memory may be compromising psychosocial functioning in children with idiopathic epilepsy, possibly underscoring that cognitive variables, such as auditory verbal memory, should be assessed and treated in this population to prevent secondary symptoms. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Episodic memory impairment in Addison's disease: results from a telephonic cognitive assessment.
Henry, Michelle; Thomas, Kevin G F; Ross, Ian L
2014-06-01
Patients with Addison's disease frequently self-report memory and attention difficulties, even when on standard replacement therapy. However, few published studies examine, using objective measures and assessing across multiple domains, the cognitive functioning of Addison's disease patients relative to healthy controls. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether the previously reported subjective cognitive deficits in Addison's disease are confirmed by objective measures. Conducting comprehensive neuropsychological assessments of patients with relatively rare clinical disorders, such as Addison's disease, is challenging because access to those patients is often limited, and because their medical condition might prevent extended testing sessions. Brief telephonic cognitive assessments are a useful tool in such circumstances. Hence, we administered the Brief Test of Adult Cognition by Telephone to 27 Addison's disease patients and 27 matched healthy controls. The instrument provides objective assessment of episodic memory, working memory, executive functioning, reasoning, and speed of processing. Statistical analyses confirmed that, as expected, patients performed significantly more poorly than controls on the episodic memory subtest. There were, however, no significant between-group differences on the attention, executive functioning, reasoning, and speed of processing subtests. Furthermore, patients with a longer duration of illness performed more poorly across all domains of cognition. We conclude that, for Addison's disease patients, previously reported subjective cognitive deficits are matched by objective impairment, but only in the domain of episodic memory. Future research might investigate (a) whether these memory deficits are material-specific (i.e., whether non-verbal memory is also affected), and (b) the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these deficits.
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Farooq, Abdulaziz; Gibson, Ann-Marie; J Reilly, John; Gaoua, Nadia
2018-01-01
To examine the association between obesity and cognitive function in healthy premenopausal women. From a cohort of 220 women, 98 were randomly selected that provided complete data. Body composition was examined by dual-energy X-ray scan. All participants completed the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) to assess cognitive performance in three domains: attention, memory, and planning executive function. The Reaction Time (RTI) test was used to assess motor and mental response speeds; the Stockings of Cambridge (SOC) test was used to assess planning executive function. For memory assessment, the Delayed Match to Sample (DMS), Pattern Recognition Memory (PRM), and Spatial Span (SSP) tests were used to assess forced choice recognition memory, visual pattern recognition memory, and working memory capacity, respectively. 36 (36.7%) were morbidly obese, 22 (22.4%) obese, and 23 (23.5%) overweight. Performance on RTI and SOC planning ability were not associated with body mass index (BMI). DMS mean time to correct response, when stimulus is visible or immediately hidden (0 ms delay), was higher by 785 ± 302 ms (milliseconds) ( p =0.011) and 587 ± 259 ms ( p =0.026) in morbidly obese women compared to normal weight women. Memory span length was significantly lower in overweight (5.5 ± 1.3, p =0.008) and obese women (5.6 ± 1.6, p =0.007) compared to normal weight (6.7 ± 0.9). DEXA-assessed body fat (%) showed similar associations as BMI, and latency to correct response on DMS and PRM was positively correlated with percentage of body fat, but not with VO 2 max. In otherwise healthy premenopausal women, obesity did not impact accuracy on cognitive tasks related to attention, memory, or planning executive function, but morbid obesity was associated with higher latency to correct response on memory-specific tasks and lower memory span length.
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Short-Term Memory as an Additional Predictor of School Achievement for Immigrant Children?
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
te Nijenhuis, Jan; Resing, Wilma; Tolboom, Elsbeth; Bleichrodt, Nico
2004-01-01
The predictive validity and utility of assessment procedures can be increased by adding predictors to the prediction supplied by general ability tests. Of Jensen's early work comes the suggestion of focusing on the cognitive ability short-term memory (STM), especially for low-"g" Black children. Meta-analysis convincingly shows high…
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Grzywacz, Joseph G; Segel-Karpas, Dikla; Lachman, Margie E
2016-06-01
Expand understanding of the role of selected workplace exposures (ie, occupational complexity, conflict in the workplace, pace of work, and physical hazards) in adults' cognitive function. Cross-sectional data (n = 1991) from the second wave of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study; restricted to participants who completed telephone-based cognitive assessments of episodic memory, executive functioning, and self-perceived memory. Occupational exposure data were harvested from the ONET Release 6.0. Greater complexity was associated with better self-perceived memory among women and men, and better episodic memory and executive functioning among women. Greater physical hazards were independently associated with poorer episodic memory and executive functioning. Objective assessments of physical and psychosocial exposures in the workplace are independently associated with cognitive outcomes in adulthood, with psychosocial exposures being particularly pronounced among women.
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Wingen, M; Kuypers, K P C; Ramaekers, J G
2007-07-01
Serotonergic neurotransmission has been implicated in memory impairment. It is unclear however if memory performance is mediated through general 5-HT availability, through specific 5-HT receptors or both. The aim of the present study was to assess the contribution of 5-HT reuptake inhibition and specific blockade of 5-HT(1A) and 5-HT(2A) receptors to memory impairment. The study was conducted according to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, four-way cross-over design including 16 healthy volunteers. The treatment consisted of oral administration of escitalopram 20 mg + placebo, escitalopram 20 mg + ketanserin 50 mg, escitalopram 20 mg + pindolol 10 mg and placebo on 4 separate days with a washout period of minimum 7 days. Different memory tasks were performed including verbal memory, spatial working memory and reversal learning. Escitalopram showed an impairing effect on immediate verbal recall which nearly reached statistical significance. No effects of escitalopram were found on other types of memory. In combination with pindolol, immediate verbal recall was significantly impaired. Escitalopram in combination with ketanserin impaired spatial working memory significantly. No effects were found on reversal learning. Selective impairment of immediate verbal recall after a 5-HT(1A) partial agonist and selective impairment of spatial working memory performance after 5-HT(2A) receptor antagonist, both in combination with a selective serotonergic reuptake inhibitor (escitalopram), suggests that 5-HT(1A) and 5-HT(2A) receptors are distinctly involved in verbal and spatial memory.
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Cheng, Calvin P W; Chan, Sandra S M; Mak, Arthur D P; Chan, Wai Chi; Cheng, Sheung Tak; Shi, Lin; Wang, Defeng; Lam, Linda Chiu-Wa
2015-10-24
There has been longstanding interesting in cognitive training for older adults with cognitive impairment. In this study, we will investigate the effects of working memory training, and explore augmentation strategies that could possibly consolidate the effects in older adults with mild neurocognitive disorder. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been demonstrated to affect the neuronal excitability and reported to enhance memory performance. As tDCS may also modulate cognitive function through changes in neuroplastic response, it would be adopted as an augmentation strategy for working memory training in the present study. This is a 4-week intervention double-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT) of tDCS. Chinese older adults (aged 60 to 90 years) with mild neurocognitive disorder due to Alzheimer's disease (DSM-5 criteria) would be randomized into a 4-week intervention of either tDCS-working memory (DCS-WM), tDCS-control cognitive training (DCS-CC), and sham tDCS-working memory (WM-CD) groups. The primary outcome would be working memory test - the n-back task performance and the Chinese version of the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale - Cognitive Subscale (ADAS-Cog). Secondary outcomes would be test performance of specific cognitive domains and mood. Intention-to-treat analysis would be carried out. Changes of efficacy indicators with time and intervention would be tested with mixed effect models. This study adopts the theory of neuroplasticity to evaluate the potential cognitive benefits of non-invasive electrical brain stimulation, working memory training and dual stimulation in older adults at risk of cognitive decline. It would also examine the tolerability, program adherence and adverse effects of this novel intervention. Information would be helpful for further research of dementia prevention studies. ChiCTR-TRC- 14005036 Date of registration: 31 July 2014.
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Calia, Clara; Darling, Stephen; Havelka, Jelena; Allen, Richard J
2018-05-01
Immediate serial recall of digits is better when the digits are shown by highlighting them in a familiar array, such as a phone keypad, compared with presenting them serially in a single location, a pattern referred to as "visuospatial bootstrapping." This pattern implies the establishment of temporary links between verbal and spatial working memory, alongside access to information in long-term memory. However, the role of working memory control processes like those implied by the "Central Executive" in bootstrapping has not been directly investigated. Here, we report a study addressing this issue, focusing on executive processes of attentional shifting. Tasks in which information has to be sequenced are thought to be heavily dependent on shifting. Memory for digits presented in keypads versus single locations was assessed under two secondary task load conditions, one with and one without a sequencing requirement, and hence differing in the degree to which they invoke shifting. Results provided clear evidence that multimodal binding (visuospatial bootstrapping) can operate independently of this form of executive control process.
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Petit, Géraldine; Luminet, Olivier; Cordovil de Sousa Uva, Mariana; Zorbas, Alexis; Maurage, Pierre; de Timary, Philippe
2017-01-01
Objective There is a lack of consensus regarding the extent to which cognitive dysfunctions may recover upon cessation of alcohol intake by alcohol-dependents (AD), and the divergent findings are most likely due to methodological differences between the various studies. The present study was aimed at conducting a very strict longitudinal study of cognitive recovery in terms of assessment points, the duration of abstinence, control of age and duration of the addiction, and by use of individual analyses in addition to mean group comparisons. Our study further focused on the 2–3 week phase of alcohol detoxification that is already known to positively affect many biological, emotional, motivational, as well as neural variables, followed by longer-term therapies for which good cognitive functioning is needed. Methods 41 AD inpatients undergoing a detoxification program, and 41 matched controls, were evaluated twice in terms of five cognitive functions (i.e., short-term memory, working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and verbal fluency) within a three-week interval [on the first day (T1) and the 18th day (T2) of abstinence for AD patients]. Emotional (positive and negative affectivity and depression) and motivational (craving) variables were also measured at both evaluation times. Results Although verbal fluency, short-term memory, and cognitive flexibility did not appear to be affected, the patients exhibited impaired inhibition and working memory at T1. While no recovery of inhibition was found to occur, the average working memory performance of the patients was comparable to that of the controls at T2. Improvements in emotional and motivational dimensions were also observed, although they did not correlate with the ones in working memory. Individual analysis showed that not all participants were impaired or recover the same functions. Conclusions While inhibition deficits appear to persist after 18 days of detoxification, deficits in working memory, which is a central component of cognition, are greatly reduced after alcohol detoxification. Individual differences in the trajectory of recovery do arise however, and it might be worth implementing individual assessments of impaired functions at the end of the detoxification phase in order to maximize the chances of success in longer-term treatments and abstinence. PMID:28767647
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Linssen, A M W; Vuurman, E F P M; Sambeth, A; Riedel, W J
2012-06-01
Methylphenidate inhibits the reuptake of dopamine and noradrenaline and is used to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Besides reducing behavioral symptoms, it improves their cognitive function. There are also observations of methylphenidate-induced cognition enhancement in healthy adults, although studies in this area are relatively sparse. We assessed the possible memory-enhancing properties of methylphenidate. In the current study, the possible enhancing effects of three doses of methylphenidate on declarative and working memory, attention, response inhibition and planning were investigated in healthy volunteers. In a double blind placebo-controlled crossover study, 19 healthy young male volunteers were tested after a single dose of placebo or 10, 20 or 40 mg of methylphenidate. Cognitive performance testing included a word learning test as a measure of declarative memory, a spatial working memory test, a set-shifting test, a stop signal test and a computerized version of the Tower of London planning test. Declarative memory consolidation was significantly improved relative to placebo after 20 and 40 mg of methylphenidate. Methylphenidate also improved set shifting and stopped signal task performance but did not affect spatial working memory or planning. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study reporting enhanced declarative memory consolidation after methylphenidate in a dose-related fashion over a dose range that is presumed to reflect a wide range of dopamine reuptake inhibition.
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Walrave, Laura; Vinken, Mathieu; Albertini, Giulia; De Bundel, Dimitri; Leybaert, Luc; Smolders, Ilse J
2016-01-01
Astrocytes are active players in higher brain function as they can release gliotransmitters, which are essential for synaptic plasticity. Various mechanisms have been proposed for gliotransmission, including vesicular mechanisms as well as non-vesicular ones, for example by passive diffusion via connexin hemichannels (HCs). We here investigated whether interfering with connexin43 (Cx43) HCs influenced hippocampal spatial memory. We made use of the peptide Gap19 that blocks HCs but not gap junction channels and is specific for Cx43. To this end, we microinfused transactivator of transcription linked Gap19 (TAT-Gap19) into the brain ventricle of male NMRI mice and assessed spatial memory in a Y maze. We found that the in vivo blockade of Cx43 HCs did not affect the locomotor activity or spatial working memory in a spontaneous alternation Y maze task. Cx43 blockade did however significantly impair the spatial short-term memory in a delayed spontaneous alternation Y maze task. These results indicate that Cx43 HCs play a role in spatial short-term memory.
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NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Glassman, Lisa Hayley
Individuals with public speaking phobia experience fear and avoidance that can cause extreme distress, impaired speaking performance, and associated problems in psychosocial functioning. Most extant interventions for public speaking phobia focus on the reduction of anxiety and avoidance, but neglect performance. Additionally, very little is known about the relationship between verbal working memory and social performance under conditions of high anxiety. The current study compared the efficacy of two cognitive behavioral treatments, traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (tCBT) and acceptance-based behavior therapy (ABBT), in enhancing public speaking performance via coping with anxiety. Verbal working memory performance, as measured by the backwards digit span (BDS), was measured to explore the relationships between treatment type, anxiety, performance, and verbal working memory. We randomized 30 individuals with high public speaking anxiety to a 90-minute ABBT or tCBT intervention. As this pilot study was underpowered, results are examined in terms of effect sizes as well as statistical significance. Assessments took place at pre and post-intervention and included self-rated and objective anxiety measurements, a behavioral assessment, ABBT and tCBT process measures, and backwards digit span verbal working memory tests. In order to examine verbal working memory during different levels of anxiety and performance pressure, we gave each participant a backwards digit span task three times during each assessment: once under calm conditions, then again while experiencing anticipatory anxiety, and finally under conditions of acute social performance anxiety in front of an audience. Participants were asked to give a video-recorded speech in front of the audience at pre- and post-intervention to examine speech performance. Results indicated that all participants experienced a very large and statistically significant decrease in anxiety (both during the speech and BDS), as well as an improvement in speech performance regardless of intervention received. While not statistically significant, participants who received an acceptance-based intervention exhibited larger improvements in observer-rated speech performance at post-treatment in comparison to tCBT (F (1,21) = 1.91, p =.18, etap2 = .08) such that individuals in the ABBT condition exhibited a considerably greater improvement in observer-rated speech performance than those in the tCBT condition. There was no differential impact of treatment condition on subjective speech anxiety or working memory task performance. Potential mediators and moderators of treatment were also examined. Results provide support for a brief 90-minute intervention for public speaking anxiety, but more research is needed in a study with a larger sample to fully understand the relationship between ABBT strategies and improvements in behavioral performance.
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Georgiou, George K; Das, J P
2016-01-01
The purpose of this study was two-fold: (a) to examine what component of executive functions (EF) - planning and working memory - predicts reading comprehension in young adults (Study 1), and (b) to examine if less skilled comprehenders experience deficits in the EF components (Study 2). In Study 1, we assessed 178 university students (120 females; mean age=21.82 years) on planning (Planned Connections, Planned Codes, and Planned Patterns), working memory (Listening Span, Digit Span Backward, and Digit Memory), and reading comprehension (Nelson-Denny Reading Test). The results of structural equation modeling indicated that only planning was a significant predictor of reading comprehension. In Study 2, we assessed 30 university students with a specific reading comprehension deficit (19 females; mean age=23.01 years) and 30 controls (18 females; mean age=22.77 years) on planning (Planned Connections and Crack the Code) and working memory (Listening Span and Digit Span Backward). The results showed that less skilled comprehenders performed significantly poorer than controls only in planning. Taken together, the findings of both studies suggest that planning is the preeminent component of EF that is driving its relationship with reading comprehension in young adults. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Mifflin, Katherine; Chorney, Jill; Dick, Bruce
2016-07-01
Adolescents with chronic pain often report inattention and poor memory. There has been little research on cognitive function in this population. The goal of this preliminary pilot study was to examine differences in cognitive function between adolescents with chronic pain to pain-free adolescents. All participants completed baseline assessments of pain, school absences, depression, anxiety, and sleep habits. Standardized neurocognitive tests were used to examine cognitive function with a focus on working memory and attention. Recruitment from the chronic pain clinic resulted in a female sample of 13 individuals (largely reflective of the clinical population). Pain-free age-matched and sex-matched individuals (n=12) were therefore also recruited as controls. Individuals with chronic pain had significantly lower working memory scores than controls. Differences were found between groups on the most difficult selective attention task and not on tests of sustained attention, divided attention, or attentional switching. In a stepwise regression with baseline characteristics entered in the first step, pain accounted for approximately 15% of the variance in working memory and medication score counted for 49% of the variance. This pilot study is the first study to examine differences in working memory and attention between participants with chronic pain and pain-free adolescents. Our findings suggest that chronic pain may negatively affect adolescents' working memory function and highlights the risk for cognitive difficulties and problems with educational progression in addition to negative health and social effects associated with chronic pain. The study provides a starting point for more research and has the potential to direct better identification and treatment of these cognitive deficits.
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Simmering, Vanessa R; Wood, Chelsey M
2017-08-01
Working memory is a basic cognitive process that predicts higher-level skills. A central question in theories of working memory development is the generality of the mechanisms proposed to explain improvements in performance. Prior theories have been closely tied to particular tasks and/or age groups, limiting their generalizability. The cognitive dynamics theory of visual working memory development has been proposed to overcome this limitation. From this perspective, developmental improvements arise through the coordination of cognitive processes to meet demands of different behavioral tasks. This notion is described as real-time stability, and can be probed through experiments that assess how changing task demands impact children's performance. The current studies test this account by probing visual working memory for colors and shapes in a change detection task that compares detection of changes to new features versus swaps in color-shape binding. In Experiment 1, 3- to 4-year-old children showed impairments specific to binding swaps, as predicted by decreased real-time stability early in development; 5- to 6-year-old children showed a slight advantage on binding swaps, but 7- to 8-year-old children and adults showed no difference across trial types. Experiment 2 tested the proposed explanation of young children's binding impairment through added perceptual structure, which supported the stability and precision of feature localization in memory-a process key to detecting binding swaps. This additional structure improved young children's binding swap detection, but not new-feature detection or adults' performance. These results provide further evidence for the cognitive dynamics and real-time stability explanation of visual working memory development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).
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Interaction of threat and verbal working memory in adolescents.
Patel, Nilam; Vytal, Katherine; Pavletic, Nevia; Stoodley, Catherine; Pine, Daniel S; Grillon, Christian; Ernst, Monique
2016-04-01
Threat induces a state of sustained anxiety that can disrupt cognitive processing, and, reciprocally, cognitive processing can modulate an anxiety response to threat. These effects depend on the level of cognitive engagement, which itself varies as a function of task difficulty. In adults, we recently showed that induced anxiety impaired working memory accuracy at low and medium but not high load. Conversely, increasing the task load reduced the physiological correlates of anxiety (anxiety-potentiated startle). The present work examines such threat-cognition interactions as a function of age. We expected threat to more strongly impact working memory in younger individuals by virtue of putatively restricted cognitive resources and weaker emotion regulation. This was tested by examining the influence of age on the interaction of anxiety and working memory in 25 adolescents (10 to 17 years) and 25 adults (22 to 46 years). Working memory load was manipulated using a verbal n-back task. Anxiety was induced using the threat of an aversive loud scream and measured via eyeblink startle. Findings revealed that, in both age groups, accuracy was lower during threat than safe conditions at low and medium but not high load, and reaction times were faster during threat than safe conditions at high load but did not differ at other loads. Additionally, anxiety-potentiated startle was greater during low and medium than high load. Thus, the interactions of anxiety with working memory appear similar in adolescents and adults. Whether these similarities reflect common neural mechanisms would need to be assessed using functional neuroimaging. Published 2015. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
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Madderom, Marlous J; Schiller, Raisa M; Gischler, Saskia J; van Heijst, Arno F J; Tibboel, Dick; Aarsen, Femke K; IJsselstijn, Hanneke
2016-06-01
To assess neuropsychologic outcome in 17- and 18-year-old neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation survivors. A prospective longitudinal follow-up study. Follow-up program at the Erasmus MC-Sophia Children's Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Thirty adolescents 17 or 18 years old, treated between 1991 and 1997, underwent neuropsychologic assessment. None. Attention, memory, executive functioning, visual-spatial functions, social-emotional functioning, and behavior were assessed with validated instruments, and data were compared with reference data. Included predictors for analysis of adverse outcome were diagnosis, age at start extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, convulsions, and use of antiepileptics. Adolescents' performance (expressed as mean [SD] z score) was significantly lower than the norm on short-term and long-term verbal memory (z score = -1.40 [1.58], p = 0.016; z score = -1.54 [1.67], p = 0.010, respectively), visual-spatial memory (z score = -1.65 [1.37], p = 0.008; z score = -1.70 [1.23], p = 0.008, respectively), and working memory (32% vs 9% in the norm population). Parents reported more problems for their children regarding organization of materials (z score = -0.60 [0.90]; p = 0.03) and behavior evaluation (z score = -0.53 [0.88]; p = 0.05) on a questionnaire. Patients reported more withdrawn/depressed behavior (z score = -0.47 [0.54]; p = 0.02), somatic complaints (z score = -0.43 [0.48]; p = 0.03), and social problems (z score = -0.41 [0.46]; p = 0.04). Patients reported more positive feelings of self-esteem and an average health status. Adolescents treated with neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation are at risk of verbal, visual-spatial, and working memory problems. Future research should focus on 1) the longitudinal outcome of specific neuropsychologic skills in adolescence and adulthood; 2) identifying risk factors of neuropsychologic dysfunction; 3) evaluating to what extent "severity of illness" is responsible for acquired brain injury; and 4) effects of timely cognitive rehabilitation.
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Bauer, Jessie-Raye; Martinez, Joel E.; Roe, Mary Abbe; Church, Jessica A.
2017-01-01
Two behavioral experiments assessed the plasticity and short-term improvement of task switching in 215 children and adults. Specifically, we studied manipulations of cued attention to different features of a target stimulus as a way to assess the development of cognitive flexibility. Each experiment had multiple levels of difficulty via manipulation of number of cued features (2–4) and number of response options (2 or 4). Working memory demand was manipulated across the two experiments. Impact of memory demand and task level manipulations on task accuracy and response times were measured. There were three overall goals: First, these task manipulations (number of cued features, response choices, and working memory load) were tested to assess the stability of group differences in performance between children ages 6–16 years and adults 18–27 years, with the goal of reducing age group differences. Second, age-related transitions to adult-level performance were examined within subgroups of the child sample. Third, short-term improvement from the beginning to the end of the study session was measured to probe whether children can improve with task experience. Attempts to use task manipulations to reduce age differences in cued task switching performance were unsuccessful: children performed consistently worse and were more susceptible to task manipulations than adults. However, across both studies, adult-like performance was observed around mid-adolescence, by ages 13-16 years. Certain task manipulations, especially increasing number of response options when working memory demand was low, produced differences from adults even in the oldest children. Interestingly, there was similar performance improvement with practice for both child and adult groups. The higher memory demand version of the task (Experiment 2) prompted greater short-term improvement in accuracy and response times than the lower memory demand version (Experiment 1). These results reveal stable differences in cued switching performance over development, but also relative flexibility within a given individual over time. PMID:28824489
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Gade, Miriam; Souza, Alessandra S; Druey, Michel D; Oberauer, Klaus
2017-01-01
Working memory (WM) holds and manipulates representations for ongoing cognition. Oberauer (Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 51, 45-100, 2009) distinguishes between two analogous WM sub-systems: a declarative WM which handles the objects of thought, and a procedural WM which handles the representations of (cognitive) actions. Here, we assessed whether analogous effects are observed when participants switch between memory sets (declarative representations) and when they switch between task sets (procedural representations). One mechanism assumed to facilitate switching in procedural WM is the inhibition of previously used, but currently irrelevant task sets, as indexed by n-2 task-repetition costs (Mayr & Keele, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(1), 4-26, 2000). In this study we tested for an analogous effect in declarative WM. We assessed the evidence for n-2 list-repetition costs across eight experiments in which participants switched between memory lists to perform speeded classifications, mental arithmetic, or a local recognition test. N-2 list-repetition costs were obtained consistently in conditions assumed to increase interference between memory lists, and when lists formed chunks in long-term memory. Further analyses across experiments revealed a substantial contribution of episodic memory to n-2 list-repetition costs, thereby questioning the interpretation of n-2 repetition costs as reflecting inhibition. We reanalyzed the data of eight task-switching experiments, and observed that episodic memory also contributes to n-2 task-repetition costs. Taken together, these results show analogous processing principles in declarative and procedural WM, and question the relevance of inhibitory processes for efficient switching between mental sets.
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Moderators of noise-induced cognitive change in healthy adults.
Wright, Bernice Al; Peters, Emmanuelle R; Ettinger, Ulrich; Kuipers, Elizabeth; Kumari, Veena
2016-01-01
Environmental noise causes cognitive impairment, particularly in executive function and episodic memory domains, in healthy populations. However, the possible moderating influences on this relationship are less clear. This study assessed 54 healthy participants (24 men) on a cognitive battery (measuring psychomotor speed, attention, executive function, working memory, and verbal learning and memory) under three (quiet, urban, and social) noise conditions. IQ, subjective noise sensitivity, sleep, personality, paranoia, depression, anxiety, stress, and schizotypy were assessed on a single occasion. We found significantly slower psychomotor speed (urban), reduced working memory and episodic memory (urban and social), and more cautious decision-making (executive function, urban) under noise conditions. There was no effect of sex. Variance in urban noise-induced changes in psychomotor speed, attention, Trail Making B-A (executive function), and immediate recall and social noise-induced changes in verbal fluency (executive function) and immediate recall were explained by a combination of baseline cognition and paranoia, noise sensitivity, sleep, or cognitive disorganization. Higher baseline cognition (but not IQ) predicted greater impairment under urban and social noise for most cognitive variables. Paranoia predicted psychomotor speed, attention, and executive function impairment. Subjective noise sensitivity predicted executive function and memory impairment. Poor sleep quality predicted less memory impairment. Finally, lower levels of cognitive disorganization predicted slower psychomotor speed and greater memory impairment. The identified moderators should be considered in studies aiming to reduce the detrimental effects of occupational and residential noise. These results highlight the importance of studying noise effects in clinical populations characterized by high levels of the paranoia, sleep disturbances, noise sensitivity, and cognitive disorganization.
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Moderators of noise-induced cognitive change in healthy adults
Wright, Bernice AL; Peters, Emmanuelle R; Ettinger, Ulrich; Kuipers, Elizabeth; Kumari, Veena
2016-01-01
Environmental noise causes cognitive impairment, particularly in executive function and episodic memory domains, in healthy populations. However, the possible moderating influences on this relationship are less clear. This study assessed 54 healthy participants (24 men) on a cognitive battery (measuring psychomotor speed, attention, executive function, working memory, and verbal learning and memory) under three (quiet, urban, and social) noise conditions. IQ, subjective noise sensitivity, sleep, personality, paranoia, depression, anxiety, stress, and schizotypy were assessed on a single occasion. We found significantly slower psychomotor speed (urban), reduced working memory and episodic memory (urban and social), and more cautious decision-making (executive function, urban) under noise conditions. There was no effect of sex. Variance in urban noise-induced changes in psychomotor speed, attention, Trail Making B-A (executive function), and immediate recall and social noise-induced changes in verbal fluency (executive function) and immediate recall were explained by a combination of baseline cognition and paranoia, noise sensitivity, sleep, or cognitive disorganization. Higher baseline cognition (but not IQ) predicted greater impairment under urban and social noise for most cognitive variables. Paranoia predicted psychomotor speed, attention, and executive function impairment. Subjective noise sensitivity predicted executive function and memory impairment. Poor sleep quality predicted less memory impairment. Finally, lower levels of cognitive disorganization predicted slower psychomotor speed and greater memory impairment. The identified moderators should be considered in studies aiming to reduce the detrimental effects of occupational and residential noise. These results highlight the importance of studying noise effects in clinical populations characterized by high levels of the paranoia, sleep disturbances, noise sensitivity, and cognitive disorganization. PMID:27157685
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Paule, Merle G; Green, Leonard; Myerson, Joel; Alvarado, Maria; Bachevalier, Jocelyne; Schneider, Jay S; Schantz, Susan L
2012-03-01
A variety of behavioral instruments are available for assessing important aspects of cognition in both animals and humans and, in many cases, the same instruments can be used in both. While nonhuman primates are phylogenetically closest to humans, rodents, pigeons and other animals also offer behaviors worthy of note. Delay Discounting procedures are as useful as any in studies of impulsivity and may have utility in shedding light on processes associated with drug abuse. Specific memory tests such as Visual Paired Comparisons tasks (similar to the Fagan test of infant intelligence) can be modified to allow for assessment of different aspects of memory such as spatial memory. Use of these and other specific memory tasks can be used to directly monitor aspects of cognitive development in infant animals, particularly in nonhuman primates such as monkeys, and children and to draw inferences with respect to possible neuroanatomical substrates sub-serving their functions. Tasks for assessing working memory such as Variable Delayed Response (VDR), modified VDR and Spatial Working Memory tasks are now known to be affected in Parkinson's disease (PD). These and other cognitive function tasks are being used in a monkey model of PD to assess the ability of anti-Parkinson's disease therapies to ameliorate these cognitive deficits without diminishing their therapeutic effects on motor dysfunction. Similarly, in a rat model of the cognitive deficits associated with perinatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), clear parallels with children can be seen in at least two areas of executive function: cognitive flexibility and response inhibition. In the rat model, discrimination reversal tasks were utilized to assess cognitive flexibility, a function often assessed in humans using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Response inhibition was assessed using performance in a Differential Reinforcement of Low Response Rates (DRL) task. As the data continue to accumulate, it becomes more clear that our attempts to adapt animal-appropriate tasks for the study of important aspects of human cognition have proven to be very fruitful. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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Cancer, Cognitive Impairment, and Work-Related Outcomes: An Integrative Review.
Von Ah, Diane; Storey, Susan; Tallman, Eileen; Nielsen, Adele; Johns, Shelley; Pressler, Susan
2016-09-01
Cancer survivors often report concerns regarding their memory, attention, and ability to process information and make decisions. These problems, which have also been demonstrated on objective neuropsychological assessments, may have a significant impact on work-related outcomes. . A literature review was conducted using the following electronic databases. Articles were evaluated by two independent researchers. . Twenty-six studies met the inclusion criteria. Ten were qualitative, 15 were quantitative, and 1 had a mixed-methods design. Quantitative articles were synthesized using the integrative methodology strategies proposed by Whittemore and Knafl. Synthesis of qualitative articles was conducted using the criteria established by the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services. . To date, research in this context has been limited by cognitive assessments focusing primarily on patient self-assessments of attention, concentration, and memory. Additional research is needed to examine the impact of cognitive performance and to expand work-related outcomes measures to include perceived work ability, productivity, and actual performance. . Lack of information regarding cognitive impairment inhibits survivors' ability to prepare, understand, and accept impending cognitive changes and how they may affect work ability. Oncology nurses can assist cancer survivors by preparing and educating them on how to better manage impairment associated with cancer and its treatment.
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Cognitive effects of methylphenidate and levodopa in healthy volunteers.
Linssen, A M W; Sambeth, A; Vuurman, E F P M; Riedel, W J
2014-02-01
Our previous study showed enhanced declarative memory consolidation after acute methylphenidate (MPH) administration. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the duration of this effect. Secondary, the dopaminergic contribution of MPH effects, the electrophysiological correlates of declarative memory, and the specificity of memory enhancing effects of MPH to declarative memory were assessed. Effects of 40 mg of MPH on memory performance were compared to 100mg of levodopa (LEV) in a placebo-controlled crossover study with 30 healthy volunteers. Memory performance testing included a word learning test, the Sternberg memory scanning task, a paired associates learning task, and a spatial working memory task. During the word learning test, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were measured. MPH failed to enhance retention of words at a 30 min delay, but it improved 24 h delayed memory recall relative to PLA and LEV. Furthermore, during encoding, the P3b and P600 ERP latencies were prolonged and the P600 amplitude was larger after LEV compared to PLA and MPH. MPH speeded response times on the Sternberg Memory Scanning task and improved performance on the Paired Associates Learning task, relative to LEV, but not PLA. Performance on the Spatial working memory task was not affected by the treatments. These findings suggest that MPH and LEV might have opposite effects on memory. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. and ECNP.
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Prussien, Kemar V; DeBaun, Michael R; Yarboi, Janet; Bemis, Heather; McNally, Colleen; Williams, Ellen; Compas, Bruce E
2018-06-01
The objective of this study was to investigate the association between cognitive functioning, coping, and depressive symptoms in children and adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD). Forty-four children (M age = 9.30, SD = 3.08; 56.8% male) with SCD completed cognitive assessments measuring working memory (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition) and verbal comprehension (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence-Second Edition). Participants' primary caregivers completed questionnaires assessing their child's coping and depressive symptoms. Verbal comprehension was significantly positively associated with secondary control coping (cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, distraction), and both working memory and secondary control coping were negatively associated with depressive symptoms. In partial support of the primary study hypothesis, verbal comprehension had an indirect association with depressive symptoms through secondary control coping, whereas working memory had a direct association with depressive symptoms. The results provide new evidence for the associations between cognitive function and coping, and the association of both of these processes with depressive symptoms in children with SCD. Findings provide potential implications for clinical practice, including interventions to improve children's cognitive functioning to attenuate depressive symptoms.
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Lunke, Katrin; Meier, Beat
2016-01-01
The goal of the present study was to take a new look at the relationship between creativity and cognitive functioning. Based on models that have postulated domain- and sub-domain-structures for different forms of creativity, like scientific, technical or artistic creativity with cognitive functions as important basis, we developed a new questionnaire. The Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (ACDC) assesses interest, ability and performance in a distinct way for different domains of artistic creativity. We present the data of 270 adults tested with the ACDC, standard tests of divergent and convergent thinking, and tests of cognitive functions. We present fine-grained analyses on the internal and external validity of the ACDC and on the relationships between creativity, working memory, attention, and intelligence. Our results indicate domain-specific associations between creativity and attention as well as working memory. We conclude that the ACDC is a valid instrument to assess artistic creativity and that a fine-grained analysis reveals distinct patterns of relationships between separate domains of creativity and cognition. PMID:27516745
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Lunke, Katrin; Meier, Beat
2016-01-01
The goal of the present study was to take a new look at the relationship between creativity and cognitive functioning. Based on models that have postulated domain- and sub-domain-structures for different forms of creativity, like scientific, technical or artistic creativity with cognitive functions as important basis, we developed a new questionnaire. The Artistic Creativity Domains Compendium (ACDC) assesses interest, ability and performance in a distinct way for different domains of artistic creativity. We present the data of 270 adults tested with the ACDC, standard tests of divergent and convergent thinking, and tests of cognitive functions. We present fine-grained analyses on the internal and external validity of the ACDC and on the relationships between creativity, working memory, attention, and intelligence. Our results indicate domain-specific associations between creativity and attention as well as working memory. We conclude that the ACDC is a valid instrument to assess artistic creativity and that a fine-grained analysis reveals distinct patterns of relationships between separate domains of creativity and cognition.
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The Structure of Working Memory in Young Children and Its Relation to Intelligence
Gray, Shelley; Green, Samuel; Alt, Mary; Hogan, Tiffany P.; Kuo, Trudy; Brinkley, Shara; Cowan, Nelson
2016-01-01
This study investigated the structure of working memory in young school-age children by testing the fit of three competing theoretical models using a wide variety of tasks. The best fitting models were then used to assess the relationship between working memory and nonverbal measures of fluid reasoning (Gf) and visual processing (Gv) intelligence. One hundred sixty-eight English-speaking 7–9 year olds with typical development, from three states, participated. Results showed that Cowan’s three-factor embedded processes model fit the data slightly better than Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) three-factor model (specified according to Baddeley, 1986) and decisively better than Baddeley’s (2000) four-factor model that included an episodic buffer. The focus of attention factor in Cowan’s model was a significant predictor of Gf and Gv. The results suggest that the focus of attention, rather than storage, drives the relationship between working memory, Gf, and Gv in young school-age children. Our results do not rule out the Baddeley and Hitch model, but they place constraints on both it and Cowan’s model. A common attentional component is needed for feature binding, running digit span, and visual short-term memory tasks; phonological storage is separate, as is a component of central executive processing involved in task manipulation. The results contribute to a zeitgeist in which working memory models are coming together on common ground (cf. Cowan, Saults, & Blume, 2014; Hu, Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2016). PMID:27990060
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Ng, Elaine H N; Classon, Elisabet; Larsby, Birgitta; Arlinger, Stig; Lunner, Thomas; Rudner, Mary; Rönnberg, Jerker
2014-11-23
The present study aimed to investigate the changing relationship between aided speech recognition and cognitive function during the first 6 months of hearing aid use. Twenty-seven first-time hearing aid users with symmetrical mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss were recruited. Aided speech recognition thresholds in noise were obtained in the hearing aid fitting session as well as at 3 and 6 months postfitting. Cognitive abilities were assessed using a reading span test, which is a measure of working memory capacity, and a cognitive test battery. Results showed a significant correlation between reading span and speech reception threshold during the hearing aid fitting session. This relation was significantly weakened over the first 6 months of hearing aid use. Multiple regression analysis showed that reading span was the main predictor of speech recognition thresholds in noise when hearing aids were first fitted, but that the pure-tone average hearing threshold was the main predictor 6 months later. One way of explaining the results is that working memory capacity plays a more important role in speech recognition in noise initially rather than after 6 months of use. We propose that new hearing aid users engage working memory capacity to recognize unfamiliar processed speech signals because the phonological form of these signals cannot be automatically matched to phonological representations in long-term memory. As familiarization proceeds, the mismatch effect is alleviated, and the engagement of working memory capacity is reduced. © The Author(s) 2014.
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Goble, Daniel J; Mousigian, Marianne A; Brown, Susan H
2012-01-01
Perceiving the positions and movements of one's body segments (i.e., proprioception) is critical for movement control. However, this ability declines with older age as has been demonstrated by joint angle matching paradigms in the absence of vision. The aim of the present study was to explore the extent to which reduced working memory and attentional load influence older adult proprioceptive matching performance. Older adults with relatively HIGH versus LOW working memory ability as determined by backward digit span and healthy younger adults, performed memory-based elbow position matching with and without attentional load (i.e., counting by 3 s) during target position encoding. Even without attentional load, older adults with LOW digit spans (i.e., 4 digits or less) had larger matching errors than younger adults. Further, LOW older adults made significantly greater errors when attentional loads were present during proprioceptive target encoding as compared to both younger and older adults with HIGH digit span scores (i.e., 5 digits or greater). These results extend previous position matching results that suggested greater errors in older adults were due to degraded input signals from peripheral mechanoreceptors. Specifically, the present work highlights the role cognitive factors play in the assessment of older adult proprioceptive acuity using memory-based matching paradigms. Older adults with LOW working memory appear prone to compromised proprioceptive encoding, especially when secondary cognitive tasks must be concurrently executed. This may ultimately result in poorer performance on various activities of daily living.
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Effects of Age, Acoustic Challenge, and Verbal Working Memory on Recall of Narrative Speech.
Ward, Caitlin M; Rogers, Chad S; Van Engen, Kristin J; Peelle, Jonathan E
2016-01-01
A common goal during speech comprehension is to remember what we have heard. Encoding speech into long-term memory frequently requires processes such as verbal working memory that may also be involved in processing degraded speech. Here the authors tested whether young and older adult listeners' memory for short stories was worse when the stories were acoustically degraded, or whether the additional contextual support provided by a narrative would protect against these effects. The authors tested 30 young adults (aged 18-28 years) and 30 older adults (aged 65-79 years) with good self-reported hearing. Participants heard short stories that were presented as normal (unprocessed) speech or acoustically degraded using a noise vocoding algorithm with 24 or 16 channels. The degraded stories were still fully intelligible. Following each story, participants were asked to repeat the story in as much detail as possible. Recall was scored using a modified idea unit scoring approach, which included separately scoring hierarchical levels of narrative detail. Memory for acoustically degraded stories was significantly worse than for normal stories at some levels of narrative detail. Older adults' memory for the stories was significantly worse overall, but there was no interaction between age and acoustic clarity or level of narrative detail. Verbal working memory (assessed by reading span) significantly correlated with recall accuracy for both young and older adults, whereas hearing ability (better ear pure tone average) did not. The present findings are consistent with a framework in which the additional cognitive demands caused by a degraded acoustic signal use resources that would otherwise be available for memory encoding for both young and older adults. Verbal working memory is a likely candidate for supporting both of these processes.
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Effects of Preretirement Work Complexity and Postretirement Leisure Activity on Cognitive Aging
Finkel, Deborah; Pedersen, Nancy L.
2016-01-01
Objectives: We examined the influence of postretirement leisure activity on longitudinal associations between work complexity in main lifetime occupation and trajectories of cognitive change before and after retirement. Methods: Information on complexity of work with data, people, and things, leisure activity participation in older adulthood, and four cognitive factors (verbal, spatial, memory, and speed) was available from 421 individuals in the longitudinal Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. Participants were followed for an average of 14.2 years (SD = 7.1 years) and up to 23 years across eight cognitive assessments. Most of the sample (88.6%) completed at least three cognitive assessments. Results: Results of growth curve analyses indicated that higher complexity of work with people significantly attenuated cognitive aging in verbal skills, memory, and speed of processing controlling for age, sex, and education. When leisure activity was added, greater cognitive and physical leisure activity was associated with reduced cognitive aging in verbal skills, speed of processing, and memory (for cognitive activity only). Discussion: Engagement in cognitive or physical leisure activities in older adulthood may compensate for cognitive disadvantage potentially imposed by working in occupations that offer fewer cognitive challenges. These results may provide a platform to encourage leisure activity participation in those retiring from less complex occupations. PMID:25975289
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Ihle, Andreas; Gouveia, Élvio R; Gouveia, Bruna R; Freitas, Duarte L; Jurema, Jefferson; Tinôco, Maria A; Kliegel, Matthias
2017-01-01
The present study set out to investigate the relation of the high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) level to cognitive performance and its interplay with key markers of cognitive reserve in a large sample of older adults. We assessed tests of working memory, immediate and delayed cued recall in 701 older adults from Amazonas, Brazil. The HDL-C level was derived from fasting blood samples. In addition, we interviewed individuals on their education, past occupation, and cognitive leisure activity. A critically low HDL-C level (<40 mg/dL) was significantly related to lower performance in working memory, immediate and delayed cued recall. Moderation analyses suggested that the relations of the HDL-C level to working memory and delayed cued recall were negligible in individuals with longer education, a higher cognitive level of the job, and greater engagement in cognitive leisure activity. Cognitive reserve accumulated during the life course may reduce the detrimental influences of a critically low HDL-C level on cognitive functioning in old age. © 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel.
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The Effects of Age, Priming, and Working Memory on Decision-Making.
Wood, Meagan; Black, Sheila; Gilpin, Ansley
2016-01-11
In the current study, we examined the effects of priming and personality on risky decision-making while playing the Game of Dice Task (GDT). In the GDT, participants decide how risky they wish to be on each trial. In this particular study prior to playing the GDT, participants were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions: Risk-Aversive, Risk-Seeking, or Control. In the Risk-Seeking condition, a fictional character benefitted from risky behavior while in the Risk-Aversive condition, a fictional character benefitted from exercising caution. Although not explicitly stated in the instructions, participants need to make "safe" rather than risky choices to optimize performance on the GDT. Participants were also given Daneman and Carpenter's assessment of working memory task. Interestingly, although older adults self-reported being more cautious than younger adults on the Domain Specific Risk Attitude scale (DOSPERT), older adults made riskier decisions than younger adults on the GDT. However, after controlling for working memory, the age differences on the GDT became insignificant, indicating that working memory mediated the relation between age and risky decisions on the GDT.
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Hynes, S M; Fish, J; Manly, T
2014-01-01
Recent reports suggest that intensive, progressive training on working memory tasks can lead to generalized cognitive gains. A patient, following hypoxic brain damage, showed significant difficulties in working memory and time-perception. This study examined the impact and specificity of any benefits resulting from automated working memory training (AWMT) in comparison with the effects of an equivalent programme that emphasized automated novel problem-solving (APST) which served as an active control. Following initial assessment, the patient trained for 4 weeks (20 days), 20-30 minutes a day on the APST tasks before repeating key outcome measures. He then trained for an identical period on AWMT. There were no cognitive gains apparent following APST. Furthermore, there were no disproportionate gains on digit span following AWMT. AWMT was, however, associated with improvement in time-perception that had previously been resistant to rehabilitation. In line with previous reports, AWMT was also followed by gains on a measure of planning. The results provide encouraging evidence that AWMT may have generalized benefits in the context of impaired WM capacity following brain injury.
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Rudolph, Marc D; Graham, Alice M; Feczko, Eric; Miranda-Dominguez, Oscar; Rasmussen, Jerod M; Nardos, Rahel; Entringer, Sonja; Wadhwa, Pathik D; Buss, Claudia; Fair, Damien A
2018-05-01
Several lines of evidence support the link between maternal inflammation during pregnancy and increased likelihood of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders in offspring. This longitudinal study seeks to advance understanding regarding implications of systemic maternal inflammation during pregnancy, indexed by plasma interleukin-6 (IL-6) concentrations, for large-scale brain system development and emerging executive function skills in offspring. We assessed maternal IL-6 during pregnancy, functional magnetic resonance imaging acquired in neonates, and working memory (an important component of executive function) at 2 years of age. Functional connectivity within and between multiple neonatal brain networks can be modeled to estimate maternal IL-6 concentrations during pregnancy. Brain regions heavily weighted in these models overlap substantially with those supporting working memory in a large meta-analysis. Maternal IL-6 also directly accounts for a portion of the variance of working memory at 2 years of age. Findings highlight the association of maternal inflammation during pregnancy with the developing functional architecture of the brain and emerging executive function.
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The Effects of Age, Priming, and Working Memory on Decision-Making
Wood, Meagan; Black, Sheila; Gilpin, Ansley
2016-01-01
In the current study, we examined the effects of priming and personality on risky decision-making while playing the Game of Dice Task (GDT). In the GDT, participants decide how risky they wish to be on each trial. In this particular study prior to playing the GDT, participants were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions: Risk-Aversive, Risk-Seeking, or Control. In the Risk-Seeking condition, a fictional character benefitted from risky behavior while in the Risk-Aversive condition, a fictional character benefitted from exercising caution. Although not explicitly stated in the instructions, participants need to make “safe” rather than risky choices to optimize performance on the GDT. Participants were also given Daneman and Carpenter’s assessment of working memory task. Interestingly, although older adults self-reported being more cautious than younger adults on the Domain Specific Risk Attitude scale (DOSPERT), older adults made riskier decisions than younger adults on the GDT. However, after controlling for working memory, the age differences on the GDT became insignificant, indicating that working memory mediated the relation between age and risky decisions on the GDT. PMID:26761023
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The effect of acute aerobic and resistance exercise on working memory.
Pontifex, Matthew B; Hillman, Charles H; Fernhall, Bo; Thompson, Kelli M; Valentini, Teresa A
2009-04-01
The goal of this investigation was to assess the influence of acute bouts of aerobic versus resistance exercise on the executive control of working memory. Twenty-one young adult participants completed a cardiorespiratory fitness test and maximal strength tests. On subsequent days, task performance measures of reaction time (RT) and accuracy were collected while participants completed a modified Sternberg working memory task before the start of, immediately after, and 30 min after an intervention consisting of 30 min of either resistance or aerobic exercise and a seated rest control. Findings indicated shorter RT immediately and 30 min after acute aerobic exercise relative to the preexercise baseline with no such effects observed after resistance exercise or seated rest. Further, in the aerobic condition, a larger reduction in RT from the baseline occurred during task conditions requiring increased working memory capacity. Again, no effect was observed in the resistance exercise or the seated rest conditions. These data extend the current knowledge base by indicating that acute exercise-induced changes in cognition are disproportionately related to executive control and may be specific to the aerobic exercise domain.
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Kinsella, Glynda J; Pike, Kerryn E; Cavuoto, Marina G; Lee, Stephen D
2018-04-30
There has been a recent rapid development of research characterizing prospective memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in older age. However, this body of literature remains largely separated from routine clinical practice in neuropsychology. Furthermore, there is emerging evidence of effective interventions to improve prospective memory performance. Therefore, our objective in this article was to offer a clinical neuropsychological perspective on the existing research in order to facilitate the translation of the evidence-base into clinical practice. By conducting a critical review of the existing research related to prospective memory and MCI, we highlight how this data can be introduced into clinical practice, either within diagnostic assessment or clinical management. Prospective memory is impaired in older adults with MCI, with a pattern of performance that helps with differential diagnosis from healthy aging. Clinical neuropsychologists are encouraged to add prospective memory assessment to their toolbox for diagnostic evaluation of clients with MCI. Preliminary findings of prospective memory interventions in MCI are promising, but more work is required to determine how different approaches translate to increasing independence in everyday life.
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Boudewyn, Megan A.; Long, Debra L.; Traxler, Matthew J.; Lesh, Tyler A.; Dave, Shruti; Mangun, George R.; Carter, Cameron S.; Swaab, Tamara Y.
2016-01-01
The establishment of reference is essential to language comprehension. The goal of this study was to examine listeners’ sensitivity to referential ambiguity as a function of individual variation in attention, working memory capacity, and verbal ability. Participants listened to stories in which two entities were introduced that were either very similar (e.g., two oaks) or less similar (e.g., one oak and one elm). The manipulation rendered an anaphor in a subsequent sentence (e.g., oak) ambiguous or unambiguous. EEG was recorded as listeners comprehended the story, after which participants completed tasks to assess working memory, verbal ability, and the ability to use context in task performance. Power in the alpha and theta frequency bands when listeners received critical information about the discourse entities (e.g., oaks) was used to index attention and the involvement of the working memory system in processing the entities. These measures were then used to predict an ERP component that is sensitive to referential ambiguity, the Nref, which was recorded when listeners received the anaphor. Nref amplitude at the anaphor was predicted by alpha power during the earlier critical sentence: Individuals with increased alpha power in ambiguous compared with unambiguous stories were less sensitive to the anaphor's ambiguity. Verbal ability was also predictive of greater sensitivity to referential ambiguity. Finally, increased theta power in the ambiguous compared with unambiguous condition was associated with higher working-memory span. These results highlight the role of attention and working memory in referential processing during listening comprehension. PMID:26401815
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Boudewyn, Megan A; Long, Debra L; Traxler, Matthew J; Lesh, Tyler A; Dave, Shruti; Mangun, George R; Carter, Cameron S; Swaab, Tamara Y
2015-12-01
The establishment of reference is essential to language comprehension. The goal of this study was to examine listeners' sensitivity to referential ambiguity as a function of individual variation in attention, working memory capacity, and verbal ability. Participants listened to stories in which two entities were introduced that were either very similar (e.g., two oaks) or less similar (e.g., one oak and one elm). The manipulation rendered an anaphor in a subsequent sentence (e.g., oak) ambiguous or unambiguous. EEG was recorded as listeners comprehended the story, after which participants completed tasks to assess working memory, verbal ability, and the ability to use context in task performance. Power in the alpha and theta frequency bands when listeners received critical information about the discourse entities (e.g., oaks) was used to index attention and the involvement of the working memory system in processing the entities. These measures were then used to predict an ERP component that is sensitive to referential ambiguity, the Nref, which was recorded when listeners received the anaphor. Nref amplitude at the anaphor was predicted by alpha power during the earlier critical sentence: Individuals with increased alpha power in ambiguous compared with unambiguous stories were less sensitive to the anaphor's ambiguity. Verbal ability was also predictive of greater sensitivity to referential ambiguity. Finally, increased theta power in the ambiguous compared with unambiguous condition was associated with higher working-memory span. These results highlight the role of attention and working memory in referential processing during listening comprehension.