Individual differences in autistic trait load in the general population predict visual working memory performance

Abstract Almost all models of visual working memory—the cognitive system that holds visual information in an active state—assume it has a fixed capacity: Some models propose a limit of three to four objects, where others propose there is a fixed pool of resources for each basic visual feature. Recent findings, however, suggest that memory performance is improved for real-world objects. What supports these increases in capacity? Here, we test whether the meaningfulness of a stimulus alone influences working memory capacity while controlling for visual complexity and directly assessing the active component of working memory using EEG. Participants remembered ambiguous stimuli that could either be perceived as a face or as meaningless shapes. Participants had higher performance and increased neural delay activity when the memory display consisted of more meaningful stimuli. Critically, by asking participants whether they perceived the stimuli as a face or not, we also show that these increases in visual working memory capacity and recruitment of additional neural resources are because of the subjective perception of the stimulus and thus cannot be driven by physical properties of the stimulus. Broadly, this suggests that the capacity for active storage in visual working memory is not fixed but that more meaningful stimuli recruit additional working memory resources, allowing them to be better remembered.

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Anticipatory alpha phase influences visual working memory performance

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.048 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 85 ◽

pp. 794-802 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Theodore P. Zanto ◽

James Z. Chadick ◽

Adam Gazzaley

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Alpha Phase

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Home assessment of visual working memory in pre-schoolers reveals associations between behaviour, brain activation and environmental measures.

10.31234/osf.io/venu6 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar ◽

Eva Rafetseder ◽

Yee Lee Shing ◽

Courtney McKay

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

School Children ◽

Life Stress ◽

Fluid Intelligence ◽

Colour Change ◽

Stressful Events ◽

The Difference ◽

Parietal Cortices

Visual working memory (VWM) is reliably predictive of fluid intelligence and academic achievements. The objective of the current study was to investigate the nature of individual differences in pre-schoolers by examining the relationship between behaviour-brain function underlying VWM processing and parent-reported measures. We used a portable 8 x 8 channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy system to record from the frontal and parietal cortices of 4.5-year-old pre-school children (N=74) as they completed a colour change detection VWM task in their homes. Parents were asked to fill in questionnaires on temperament, academic aspirations, home environment, and life stress. Children were median-split into a low-performing (LP) and a high-performing (HP) group based on the number of items they could successfully remember during the task. LPs increasingly activated the bilateral frontal and parietal cortices with increasing load, whereas HPs showed no difference in activation across the loads. Our findings suggested that LPs recruited more neural resources when their VWM capacity was challenged. We employed mediation analyses to examine the association between the difference in activation between the highest and lowest loads, and variables from the questionnaires. The difference in activation in the right parietal cortex partially mediated the association between parent-reported stressful life events and VWM performance. Specifically, a higher number of stressful events was associated with lower VWM performance. Critically, our findings show that the association between VWM capacity, right parietal activation, and indicators of life stress is important to understand the nature of individual differences in VWM in pre-school children.

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Contralateral Delay Activity Tracks Fluctuations in Working Memory Performance

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01233 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 30 (9) ◽

pp. 1229-1240 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Kirsten C. S. Adam ◽

Matthew K. Robison ◽

Edward K. Vogel

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Memory Load ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Memory Task ◽

Memory Storage ◽

Alpha Power ◽

Working Memory Load ◽

Contralateral Delay Activity ◽

Trial Performance

Neural measures of working memory storage, such as the contralateral delay activity (CDA), are powerful tools in working memory research. CDA amplitude is sensitive to working memory load, reaches an asymptote at known behavioral limits, and predicts individual differences in capacity. An open question, however, is whether neural measures of load also track trial-by-trial fluctuations in performance. Here, we used a whole-report working memory task to test the relationship between CDA amplitude and working memory performance. If working memory failures are due to decision-based errors and retrieval failures, CDA amplitude would not differentiate good and poor performance trials when load is held constant. If failures arise during storage, then CDA amplitude should track both working memory load and trial-by-trial performance. As expected, CDA amplitude tracked load (Experiment 1), reaching an asymptote at three items. In Experiment 2, we tracked fluctuations in trial-by-trial performance. CDA amplitude was larger (more negative) for high-performance trials compared with low-performance trials, suggesting that fluctuations in performance were related to the successful storage of items. During working memory failures, participants oriented their attention to the correct side of the screen (lateralized P1) and maintained covert attention to the correct side during the delay period (lateralized alpha power suppression). Despite the preservation of attentional orienting, we found impairments consistent with an executive attention theory of individual differences in working memory capacity; fluctuations in executive control (indexed by pretrial frontal theta power) may be to blame for storage failures.

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Reasoning bias, working memory performance and a transdiagnostic phenotype of affective disturbances and psychotic experiences in the general population

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291718002209 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 49 (11) ◽

pp. 1799-1809 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Ulrich Reininghaus ◽

Christian Rauschenberg ◽

Margreet ten Have ◽

Ron de Graaf ◽

Saskia van Dorsselaer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

General Population ◽

Help Seeking ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Population Sample ◽

Adjusted Relative Risk ◽

Psychotic Experiences ◽

Help Seeking Behaviour ◽

Reasoning Bias ◽

Affective Disturbances

AbstractBackgroundThe jumping to conclusions (JTC) reasoning bias and decreased working memory performance (WMP) are associated with psychosis, but associations with affective disturbances (i.e. depression, anxiety, mania) remain inconclusive. Recent findings also suggest a transdiagnostic phenotype of co-occurring affective disturbances and psychotic experiences (PEs). This study investigated whether JTC bias and decreased WMP are associated with co-occurring affective disturbances and PEs.MethodsData were derived from the second Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS-2). Trained interviewers administered the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) at three time points in a general population sample (N = 4618). The beads and digit-span task were completed to assess JTC bias and WMP, respectively. CIDI was used to measure affective disturbances and an add-on instrument to measure PEs.ResultsCompared to individuals with neither affective disturbances nor PEs, the JTC bias was more likely to occur in individuals with co-occurring affective disturbances and PEs [moderate psychosis (1–2 PEs): adjusted relative risk ratio (RRR) 1.17, 95% CI 0.98–1.41; and high psychosis (3 or more PEs or psychosis-related help-seeking behaviour): adjusted RRR 1.57, 95% CI 1.19–2.08], but not with affective disturbances and PEs alone, whereas decreased WMP was more likely in all groups. There was some evidence of a dose–response relationship, as JTC bias and decreased WMP were more likely in individuals with affective disturbances as the level of PEs increased or help-seeking behaviour was reported.ConclusionThe findings suggest that JTC bias and decreased WMP may contribute to a transdiagnostic phenotype of co-occurring affective disturbances and PEs.

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Separating memoranda in depth increases visual working memory performance

Journal of Vision ◽

10.1167/19.1.4 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 4 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Chaipat Chunharas ◽

Rosanne L. Rademaker ◽

Thomas C. Sprague ◽

Timothy F. Brady ◽

John T. Serences

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

Memory Performance

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Focused attention predicts visual working memory performance in 13-month-old infants: A pupillometric study

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100616 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 36 ◽

pp. 100616 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Chen Cheng ◽

Zsuzsa Kaldy ◽

Erik Blaser

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Focused Attention

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T115. REASONING BIAS, WORKING MEMORY PERFORMANCE, AND A TRANSDIAGNOSTIC PHENOTYPE OF AFFECTIVE DISTURBANCES AND PSYCHOTIC EXPERIENCES IN THE GENERAL POPULATION

Schizophrenia Bulletin ◽

10.1093/schbul/sby016.391 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 44 (suppl_1) ◽

pp. S160-S161

Author(s):

Christian Rauschenberg ◽

Ulrich Reininghaus ◽

Margreet ten Have ◽

Ron de Graaf ◽

Saskia van Dorsselaer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

General Population ◽

Memory Performance ◽

Psychotic Experiences ◽

Reasoning Bias ◽

Affective Disturbances

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Gray Matter Volume in Different Cortical Structures Dissociably Relates to Individual Differences in Capacity and Precision of Visual Working Memory

Cerebral Cortex ◽

10.1093/cercor/bhaa046 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (9) ◽

pp. 4759-4770

Author(s):

Maro G Machizawa ◽

Jon Driver ◽

Takeo Watanabe

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

Gray Matter ◽

Visual Information ◽

Parietal Lobe ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Gray Matter Volume ◽

Brain Anatomy

Abstract Visual working memory (VWM) refers to our ability to selectively maintain visual information in a mental representation. While cognitive limits of VWM greatly influence a variety of mental operations, it remains controversial whether the quantity or quality of representations in mind constrains VWM. Here, we examined behavior-to-brain anatomical relations as well as brain activity to brain anatomy associations with a “neural” marker specific to the retention interval of VWM. Our results consistently indicated that individuals who maintained a larger number of items in VWM tended to have a larger gray matter (GM) volume in their left lateral occipital region. In contrast, individuals with a superior ability to retain with high precision tended to have a larger GM volume in their right parietal lobe. These results indicate that individual differences in quantity and quality of VWM may be associated with regional GM volumes in a dissociable manner, indicating willful integration of information in VWM may recruit separable cortical subsystems.

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