Does the capacity of working memory change with age?

Wingfield, Arthur; Stine, Elizabeth A. L.; Lahar, Cindy J.; Aberdeen, John S.

doi:10.1080/03610738808259731

Cited by 244 publications

(148 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…ies that have compared digit versus word spans have at times observed intact digit spans but impaired word spans in normal aging (Light & Anderson, 1985, Experiment I;Wingfield, Stine, Lahar, & Aberdeen, 1988). In these studies, a difference of about one unit was found between the word spans of young subjects and those of aged subjects.…”

Section: Manipulation In Normal Aging 573mentioning

confidence: 70%

Effect of normal aging on the manipulation of information in working memory

1998

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The goal of this study is to examine the central executive of working memory in normal aging, specifically focusing on its capacities to manipulate or modify the format of the to-be-recalled material. The central executive was measured with the alphabetical span procedure, during which subjects were asked to recall a random series of words in their alphabetical order. The storage demand was equalized across subjects by adjusting the list lengths according to individual span. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed that elderly subjects were not impaired in manipulating information, relative to young controls, even when the difficulty of the task was increased. In Experiment 4, validity was tested by asking young subjects to perform the task under the conditions of full or divided attention. Alphabetical recall was more impaired than direct recall during the divided attention condition, which suggests a larger involvement of the central executive component in the former. These results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis of a central executive impairment being associated with normal aging.Working memory (WM) is a short-term memory system involved in tasks that require concurrent retention and processing (Baddeley, 1986;Baddeley & Hitch, 1974, 1994Salthouse, 1994). In Baddeley's theoretical framework, WM is a tripartite system composed of two specialized slave systems-the phonological loop and the visuo spatial sketchpad-and a central executive. The phonological loop contributes to the retention ofverbal information and is subdivided into a passive phonological store and a rehearsal procedure. The visuospatial sketchpad holds images and spatial information. The central executive is an attentional component involved in the control and distribution oflimited resources (Baddeley, 1986(Baddeley, , 1992Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). This study focuses on the manipulation capacities of the central executive in normal aging. Manipulation is defined as the process of actively and consciously modifying the format of the information to be recalled. Within a WM framework, manipulation would require involvement of the central executive component.This work was supported by a grant from the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC; PG-28) and from Ie Fond de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec (FRSQ) to S,8., by a chercheur-boursier fellowship from the FRSQ to S.8., and by a scholarship from the FCAR to N.R. and N,C. The authors thank Laurent Mottron, Francois Crepeau, Geoffrey R. Loftus, Frank Bellezza, and Leah Light for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the text Thanks to Michel Lamoureux and Jean-Francois Angers for statistical advice, as well as to Fanny Guerin, Sherif Karama, and Sonia Litalien for testing assistance. Special thanks to Rodolphe Sauvage for conducting Experiment 3. Finally, the authors gratefully acknowledge Ronald Dixon for his comments and for editing the text. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sylvie Belleville, Centre de Recherche de l'Institut Universitaire de Geriatric de...

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Section: Manipulation In Normal Aging 573mentioning

confidence: 70%

Effect of normal aging on the manipulation of information in working memory

1998

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“…Answer: Larger age-related decreases in measures of WM capacity have been obtained with reading-span, calculation-span, and other relatively complex tasks (e.g., Foos, 1989;Gick et al, 1988;Wing eld et al, 1988). One possible explanation for this is that studies with such tasks have included many very old adults, whose WM components are more impaired than those in moderately old adults.…”

Section: Question 1 0 : Is the Correspondence Axiom Correct?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Executive-process interactive control: A unified computational theory for answering 20 questions (and more) about cognitive ageing

Meyer

Glass

Seymour

et al. 2001

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology

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Although the eVects of ageing on human information processing and performance have been studied extensively, many fundamental questions about cognitive ageing remain to be answered de nitively. For example, what are the sources of age-related slowing? How much is working-memory capacity reduced in older adults? Is time-sharing ability lost with age? Answering such questions requires a uni ed computational theory that characterises the interactive operations of many component mental processes and integrates diverse data on cognitive ageing. Toward ful lling this requirement, an executive-process interactive control (EPIC) architecture has been extended to model performance of both young and older adults. EPIC models yield accurate accounts of ageing eVects on reaction times and accuracy in basic dual-task and working-memory paradigms. From these accounts, it appears that time-sharing ability and working-memory capacity decrease relatively little until after 70 years of age. Before age 70, at least some apparent performance decrements may be attributable to conservative executive processes and ineYcient task procedures rather than decreased ''hardware'' functionality. By clarifying and deepening such insights, uni ed computational theories like EPIC will help answer many questions about cognitive ageing.

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“…Individual working memory capacity (WMC) is correlated with a wide range of cognitive functions (Baddeley, 2003). Impaired WMC is associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders (Goldman-Rakic, 1994;Baddeley, 2003), as well as normal aging (Wingfield et al, 1988). Previous neuroimaging studies using diverse imaging methods have investigated neural correlates of working memory and WMC (Baddeley, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Training of Working Memory Impacts Structural Connectivity

Takeuchi

Sekiguchi

Taki³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

468

368

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Working memory is the limited capacity storage system involved in the maintenance and manipulation of information over short periods of time. Individual capacity of working memory is associated with the integrity of white matter in the frontoparietal regions. It is unknown to what extent the integrity of white matter underlying the working memory system is plastic. Using voxel-based analysis (VBA) of fractional anisotropy (FA) measures of fiber tracts, we investigated the effect of working memory training on structural connectivity in an interventional study. The amount of working memory training correlated with increased FA in the white matter regions adjacent to the intraparietal sulcus and the anterior part of the body of the corpus callosum after training. These results showed training-induced plasticity in regions that are thought to be critical in working memory. As changes in myelination lead to FA changes in diffusion tensor imaging, a possible mechanism for the observed FA change is increased myelination after training. Observed structural changes may underlie previously reported improvement of working memory capacity, improvement of other cognitive functions, and altered functional activity following working memory training.

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Does the capacity of working memory change with age?

Cited by 244 publications

References 20 publications

Effect of normal aging on the manipulation of information in working memory

Effect of normal aging on the manipulation of information in working memory

Executive-process interactive control: A unified computational theory for answering 20 questions (and more) about cognitive ageing

Training of Working Memory Impacts Structural Connectivity

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