Effects of Domain,Retention Interval,and Information Load on Young and Older Adults’ Visuospatial Working Memory

Age-related differences in visuospatial working memory were examined in 69 young adults and 49 older adults exposed to three pairs of tasks. Each pair consisted of one task involving information about the form or appearance of items and another task involving information about item locations. The first pair of tasks manipulated retention interval and required maintaining information about one item. The second pair also manipulated retention interval and required maintaining information about multiple items presented simultaneously. The third pair manipulated the number of sequentially presented items. Analyses of the first two pairs of tasks revealed significant age deficits in working memory for spatial locations but not in working memory for visual features. Notably, there were no age differences in the effect of retention interval on any of the four tasks, suggesting that visuospatial information is lost at similar rates in older and young adults. Analyses of the third pair of tasks revealed that, regardless of domain, increasing the amount of information impaired older adults’ memory performance to a greater extent than young adults’ performance. Thus, the present results suggest differences in basic working memory capacity in both domains, but a lack of age differences in rates of forgetting from working memory, and greater age-related deficits in the spatial domain than in the object domain.     

Antimnemonic effects of schemas in young and older adults

Schema-consistent material that is aligned with an individual’s knowledge and experience is typically more memorable than abstract material. This effect is often more extreme in older adults and schema use can alleviate age deficits in memory. In three experiments, young and older adults completed memory tasks where the availability of schematic information was manipulated. Specifying nonobvious relations between to-be-remembered word pairs paradoxically hindered memory (Experiment 1). Highlighting relations within mixed lists of related and unrelated word pairs had no effect on memory for those pairs (Experiment 2). This occurred even though related word pairs were recalled better than unrelated word pairs, particularly for older adults. Revealing a schematic context in a memory task with abstract image segments also hindered memory performance, particularly for older adults (Experiment 3). The data show that processing schematic information can come with costs that offset mnemonic benefits associated with schema-consistent stimuli.     

Book Reviews

There is long-standing evidence for verbal working memory impairments in both children and adults with dyslexia. By contrast, spatial memory appears largely to be unimpaired. In an attempt to distinguish between phonological and central executive accounts of the impairments in working memory, a set of phonological and spatial working memory tasks was designed to investigate the key issues in working memory, task type, task demands (static, dynamic, and updating), and task complexity. Significant differences emerged between the dyslexic and nondyslexic participants on the verbal working memory tasks employed in Experiment 1, thereby providing further evidence for continuing dyslexic impairments of working memory into adulthood. The nature of the deficits suggested a problem with the phonological loop, with there being little evidence to implicate an impairment of the central executive. Due to the difficulties associated with separating verbal working memory and phonological processing, however, performance was investigated in Experiment 2 using visuospatial measures of working memory. The results of the visuospatial tasks indicated no between-group differences in static spatial memory, which requires the short-term storage of simultaneously presented information. In almost all conditions there were no between-group differences in dynamic spatial memory that demands the recall of both location and order of stimuli presented sequentially. However, a significant impairment occurred on the dynamic task under high memory updating load, on which dyslexic adults showed nonphonological working memory deficits. In the absence of an explanation involving verbal recoding, this finding is interpreted in terms of a central executive or automaticity impairment in dyslexia.     

Word frequency influences on the list length effect and associative memory in young and older adults

Many studies show that age deficits in memory are smaller for information supported by pre-experimental experience. Many studies also find dissociations in memory tasks between words that occur with high and low frequencies in language, but the literature is mixed regarding the extent of word frequency effects in normal ageing. We examined whether age deficits in episodic memory could be influenced by manipulations of word frequency. In Experiment 1, young and older adults studied short and long lists of high- and low-frequency words for free recall. The list length effect (the drop in proportion recalled for longer lists) was larger in young compared to older adults and for high- compared to low-frequency words. In Experiment 2, young and older adults completed item and associative recognition memory tests with high- and low-frequency words. Age deficits were greater for associative memory than for item memory, demonstrating an age-related associative deficit. High-frequency words led to better associative memory performance whilst low-frequency words resulted in better item memory performance. In neither experiment was there any evidence for age deficits to be smaller for high- relative to low-frequency words, suggesting that word frequency effects on memory operate independently from effects due to cognitive ageing.     

The influence of semantic relationships on older adult map memory

Research has shown that nonspatial features, including semantic categories, can bias younger adults' spatial location memory. For example, semantically related information is remembered as being closer in space than semantically unrelated information (Hirtle & Mascolo, 1986). These findings suggest that verbal information is concurrently encoded with spatial information and influences younger adults' spatial information retrieval. The present study explored whether older adults have a similar dependency between verbal and spatial information. In Experiment 1, older and younger adults learned maps depicting semantically categorizable landmarks. After learning, participants completed landmark free recall and distance estimation tasks. Younger adults recalled more landmarks from semantically organized maps compared with older adults. In addition, younger adults were more likely to underestimate the distance between semantically related landmarks than were older adults. Experiment 2 examined whether supportive instructions would influence older adults' use of verbal information when learning maps. When given instructions that encouraged semantic feature use, older adults remembered more landmarks, were more likely to cluster landmarks semantically, and demonstrated biases in distance estimation based on semantic relationships. These findings suggest that verbal influences on spatial/map learning in older adults depends on explicit instructions or environmental support at encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Greater priming for previously distracting information in young than older adults when suppression is ruled out

The use of previously distracting information on memory tests with indirect instructions is usually age-equivalent, while young adults typically show greater explicit memory for such information. This could reflect qualitatively distinct initial processing (encoding) of distracting information by younger and older adults, but could also be caused by greater suppression of such information by younger adults on tasks with indirect instructions. In Experiment 1, young and older adults read stories containing distracting words, which they ignored, before studying a list of words containing previously distracting items for a free recall task. Half the participants were informed of the presence of previously distracting items in the study list prior to recall (direct instruction), and half were not (indirect instruction). Recall of previously distracting words was age-equivalent in the indirect condition, but young adults recalled more distracting words in the direct condition. In Experiment 2, participants performed the continuous identification with recognition task, which captures a measure of perceptual priming and recognition on each trial, and is immune to suppression. Priming and recognition of previously distracting words was greater in younger than older adults, suggesting that the young engage in more successful suppression of previously distracting information on tasks in which its relevance is not overtly signaled.     

When does prior knowledge disproportionately benefit older adults’ memory?

Material consistent with knowledge/experience is generally more memorable than material inconsistent with knowledge/experience – an effect that can be more extreme in older adults. Four experiments investigated knowledge effects on memory with young and older adults. Memory for familiar and unfamiliar proverbs (Experiment 1) and for common and uncommon scenes (Experiment 2) showed similar knowledge effects across age groups. Memory for person-consistent and person-neutral actions (Experiment 3) showed a greater benefit of prior knowledge in older adults. For cued recall of related and unrelated word pairs (Experiment 4), older adults benefited more from prior knowledge only when it provided uniquely useful additional information beyond the episodic association itself. The current data and literature suggest that prior knowledge has the age-dissociable mnemonic properties of (1) improving memory for the episodes themselves (age invariant), and (2) providing conceptual information about the tasks/stimuli extrinsically to the actual episodic memory (particularly aiding older adults).     

Recognition memory measures yield disproportionate effects of aging on learning face-name associations

No previous research has tested whether the specific age-related deficit in learning face-name associations that has been identified using recall tasks also occurs for recognition memory measures. Young and older participants saw pictures of unfamiliar people with a name and an occupation for each person, and were tested on a matching (in Experiment 1) or multiple-choice (in Experiment 2) recognition memory test. For both recognition measures, the pattern of effects was the same as that obtained using a recall measure: More face-occupation associations were remembered than face-name associations, young adults remembered more associated information than older adults overall, and older adults had disproportionately poorer memory for face-name associations. Findings implicate age-related difficulty in forming and retrieving the association between the face and the name as the primary cause of obtained deficits in previous name learning studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved).     

The role of visuospatial and verbal working memory in perceptual category learning

The role of verbal and visuospatial working memory in rule-based and information-integration category learning was examined. Previously, Maddox, Ashby, Ing, and Pickering found that a sequentially presented verbal working memory task did not affect information-integration learning, but disrupted rule-based learning when the rule was on the spatial frequency of a Gabor stimulus. This pattern was replicated in Experiment 1, in which the same category structures were used, but in which the verbal working memory task was replaced with a visuospatial analog. Experiment 2A examined rule-based learning on an oblique orientation and also found both verbal and visuospatial working memory tasks disrupting learning. Experiment 2B examined rule-based learning on a cardinal orientation and found a minimal effect of the verbal working memory task, but a large effect of the visuospatial working memory task. The conceptual significance of cardinal orientations and the role of visuospatial and verbal working memory in category learning are discussed.     

Perceptual components of situation models

These experiments examined the hypothesis that situation model construction involves perceptual processing--specifically, processing that involves visuospatial information. In this research, a dual-task paradigm was used to demonstrate that tasks that engage visuospatial processes interfere more with the generation of a situation model than tasks that are less likely to involve these processes or tasks that are verbal in nature. Using Albrecht and O'Brien's (1993) contradiction effect as evidence of situation model construction, Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants reading short texts while simultaneously holding high-imagery sentences in memory failed to show a significant contradiction effect in comparison with readers holding low-imagery sentences in memory. In Experiment 2, participants reading texts while retaining a difficult visuospatial memory load showed disrupted comprehension in comparison with readers retaining a verbal memory load.     

The roles of the central executive and visuospatial storage in mental arithmetic: A comparison across strategies

Previous research has demonstrated that working memory plays an important role in arithmetic. Different arithmetical strategies rely on working memory to different extents—for example, verbal working memory has been found to be more important for procedural strategies, such as counting and decomposition, than for retrieval strategies. Surprisingly, given the close connection between spatial and mathematical skills, the role of visuospatial working memory has received less attention and is poorly understood. This study used a dual-task methodology to investigate the impact of a dynamic spatial n-back task (Experiment 1) and tasks loading the visuospatial sketchpad and central executive (Experiment 2) on adults' use of counting, decomposition, and direct retrieval strategies for addition. While Experiment 1 suggested that visuospatial working memory plays an important role in arithmetic, especially when counting, the results of Experiment 2 suggested this was primarily due to the domain-general executive demands of the n-back task. Taken together, these results suggest that maintaining visuospatial information in mind is required when adults solve addition arithmetic problems by any strategy but the role of domain-general executive resources is much greater than that of the visuospatial sketchpad.     

Age,working memory,and the Tower of London task

The current study explores the role of three components of working memory in age differences in an executive task, the Tower of London (TOL). The TOL task is sensitive to frontal lobe damage, and is widely used to measure planning ability. Dual tasks were used to test the involvement of the phonological loop (articulatory suppression), visuospatial buffer (pattern tapping), and central executive (random generation) in age effects on the TOL. Older adults showed greater reliance than young on domain-specific verbal and spatial memory components in performing the TOL. In terms of executive function, qualitatively different interference patterns were seen in young and old participants. However, the validity of using random generation tasks to assess executive function in older populations can be questioned. For older participants, performing the TOL loads all components of working memory, whereas for the younger participants the TOL more specifically loads executive functioning.     

Working memory, reading, and mathematical skills in children with developmental coordination disorder

The aim of the present study was investigate the relationship between working memory and reading and mathematical skills in 55 children diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The findings indicate a pervasive memory deficit in all memory measures. In particular, deficits observed in visuospatial short-term and working memory tasks were significantly worse than in the verbal short-term memory ones. On the basis of these deficits, the sample was divided into high and low visuospatial memory ability groups. The low visuospatial memory group performed significantly worse on the attainment measures compared to the high visuospatial memory group, even when the contribution of IQ was taken into account. When the sample was divided into high and low verbal working memory ability groups, verbal working memory skills made a unique contribution to attainment only when verbal IQ was taken into account, but not when performance IQ was statistically controlled. It is possible that the processing demands of the working memory tasks together with the active motor component reflected in the visuospatial memory tasks and performance IQ subtest both play a crucial role in learning in children with DCD.     

Ongoing development of social cognition in adolescence

Age differences in social cognition between adolescents and young adults were investigated. Two large groups of adolescents and young adults were given tasks of theory of mind and emotion recognition. In addition, to control for possibly related basic cognitive development, working memory, speed of processing, and verbal ability were assessed. A strong age effect was revealed across both measures of social cognition. Adolescents performed with a lower accuracy than adults. Further analyses indicated that those age differences remained significant even after controlling for basic cognitive abilities. Exploratory analyses indicated no influence of pubertal phase on social cognition. Results suggest ongoing development of social cognition across adolescence, independent of individual differences in more basic cognitive abilities.     

Social relevance enhances memory for impressions in older adults

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults have difficulty retrieving contextual material over items alone. Recent research suggests this deficit can be reduced by adding emotional context, allowing for the possibility that memory for social impressions may show less age-related decline than memory for other types of contextual information. Two studies investigated how orienting to social or self-relevant aspects of information contributed to the learning and retrieval of impressions in young and older adults. Participants encoded impressions of others in conditions varying in the use of self-reference (Experiment 1) and interpersonal meaningfulness (Experiment 2), and completed memory tasks requiring the retrieval of specific traits. For both experiments, age groups remembered similar numbers of impressions. In Experiment 1 using more self-relevant encoding contexts increased memory for impressions over orienting to stimuli in a non-social way, regardless of age. In Experiment 2 older adults had enhanced memory for impressions presented in an interpersonally meaningful relative to a personally irrelevant way, whereas young adults were unaffected by this manipulation. The results provide evidence that increasing social relevance ameliorates age differences in memory for impressions, and enhances older adults’ ability to successfully retrieve contextual information.     

Age differences in visuospatial working memory

In two visuospatial working memory (VSWM) span experiments, older and young participants were tested under conditions of either high or low interference, using two different displays: computerized versions of a 3 x 3 matrix or the standard (randomly arrayed) Corsi block task (P. M. Corsi, 1972). Older adults' VSWM estimates were increased in the low-interference, compared with the high-interference, condition, replicating findings with verbal memory span studies. Young adults showed the opposite pattern, and together the findings suggest that typical VSWM span tasks include opposing components (interference and practice) that differentially affect young and older adults.     

Social relevance enhances memory for impressions in older adults

Previous research has demonstrated that older adults have difficulty retrieving contextual material over items alone. Recent research suggests this deficit can be reduced by adding emotional context, allowing for the possibility that memory for social impressions may show less age-related decline than memory for other types of contextual information. Two studies investigated how orienting to social or self-relevant aspects of information contributed to the learning and retrieval of impressions in young and older adults. Participants encoded impressions of others in conditions varying in the use of self-reference (Experiment 1) and interpersonal meaningfulness (Experiment 2), and completed memory tasks requiring the retrieval of specific traits. For both experiments, age groups remembered similar numbers of impressions. In Experiment 1 using more self-relevant encoding contexts increased memory for impressions over orienting to stimuli in a non-social way, regardless of age. In Experiment 2 older adults had enhanced memory for impressions presented in an interpersonally meaningful relative to a personally irrelevant way, whereas young adults were unaffected by this manipulation. The results provide evidence that increasing social relevance ameliorates age differences in memory for impressions, and enhances older adults' ability to successfully retrieve contextual information.     

Effects of aging on priming and skill learning.

This study examined the effects of aging on 2 kinds of implicit memory; repetition priming and skill learning. In Experiment 1, older adults showed less improvement in the skill of reading inverted words than did young adults, but priming performance did not differ for the 2 age groups. Similarly, in Experiment 2, in a partial-word identification task, skill learning was observed only for young adults, whereas there was no age difference in priming. Experiments 1a and 2a, however, showed that when older adults were presented with more perceptual information than were young adults, the age deficit in skill learning was eliminated. These results indicate that skill learning is impaired under data-limited conditions, whereas priming is unaffected under these conditions. It is proposed that the age deficit in skill learning is related to a deficit in perceptual organization and reorganization.     

Working memory in chess

Three experiments investigated the role of working memory in various aspects of thinking in chess. Experiment 1 examined the immediate memory for briefly presented chess positions from master games in players from a wide range of abilities, following the imposition of various secondary tasks designed to block separate components of working memory. Suppression of the articulatory loop (by preventing subvocal rehearsal) had no effect on measures of recall, whereas blocking the visuospatial sketchpad (by manipulation of a keypad) and blocking the central executive (by random letter generation) had equivalent disruptive effects, in comparison with a control condition. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of similar secondary tasks on the solution (i.e., move selection) of tactical chess positions, and a similar pattern was found, except that blocking the central executive was much more disruptive than in Experiment 1. Experiment 3 compared performance on two types of primary task, one concerned with solving chess positions as in Experiment 2, and the other a sentence-rearrangement task. The secondary tasks in each case were both designed to block the central executive, but one was verbal (vocal generation of random numbers), while the other was spatial in nature (random generation of keypresses). Performance of the spatial secondary task was affected to a greater extent by the chess primary task than by the verbal primary task, whereas there were no differential effects on these secondary tasks by the verbal primary task. In none of the three experiments were there any differential effects between weak and strong players. These results are interpreted in the context of the workingmemory model and previous theories of the nature of cognition in chess.