scholarly journals Action errors impair active working memory maintenance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Wessel ◽  
Jiefeng jiang

The ability to detect and correct action errors is paramount to safe and efficient behavior. Its underlying processes are subject of intense scientific debate. The recent adaptive orienting theory of error processing (AOT) proposes that errors trigger a cascade of processes that purportedly begins with a broad suppression of active motoric and – crucially – cognitive processes. While the motoric effects of errors are well established, an empirical test of their purported suppressive effects on active cognitive processes is still missing. Here, we provide data from six experiments clearly demonstrating such effects. Participants maintained information in verbal working memory (WM) and performed different response conflict tasks during the delay period. Motor error commission during the delay period consistently reduced accuracy on the WM probe, demonstrating an error-related impairment of WM maintenance. We discuss the broad theoretical and practical implications of this finding, both for the AOT and beyond.

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline B. Low ◽  
Linda S. Siegel

The present study examined the relative role played by three cognitive processes — phonological processing, verbal working memory, syntactic awareness — in understanding the reading comprehension performance among 884 native English (L1) speakers and 284 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers in sixth-grade (mean age: 11.43 years). The performance of both groups of speakers were comparable on measures of word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, phonological decoding fluency and verbal working memory. However, the ESL speakers lagged behind L1 speakers in terms of syntactic awareness. This study also emphasizes the importance of the three cognitive processes in establishing a common model of reading comprehension across English L1 and ESL reading.


2005 ◽  
Vol 115 (7) ◽  
pp. 1017-1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFFREY S. BEDWELL ◽  
MICHAEL DAVID HORNER ◽  
KAORI YAMANAKA ◽  
XINGBAO LI ◽  
HUGH MYRICK ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuri G. Pavlov ◽  
Boris Kotchoubey

AbstractMost psychophysiological studies of working memory (WM) target only the short-term memory construct, while short-term memory is only a part of the WM responsible for the storage of sensory information. Much less effort has been devoted to study brain mechanisms supporting the executive components of WM – the part responsible for the manipulation of information. Here, 156 human participants (82 females) performed two tasks requiring either simple retention or retention and manipulation of verbal information in WM. A relatively long delay period (> 6 s) was employed to investigate the temporal trajectory of the oscillatory brain activity using EEG. Compared to baseline, theta activity was significantly enhanced during encoding and the delay period. Alpha-band power decreased during encoding and switched to an increase in the first part of the delay before returning to the baseline in the second part; beta-band power remained below baseline during all three time intervals. The difference between the manipulation and retention tasks in spectral power had diverse temporal trajectories in different frequency bands. The difference maintained over encoding and the first part of the delay in theta, during the first part of the delay in beta, and during the whole delay period in alpha. Our results suggest that task-related modulations in theta power co-vary with the demands on the executive control network; beta suppression during mental manipulation can be related to the activation of motor networks; alpha is likely to reflect the activation of language areas simultaneously with sensory input blockade.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 1054-1063 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura H. F. Barde ◽  
Sharon L. Thompson-Schill

Research on the functional organization of the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) in working memory continues to be fairly equivocal between two major frameworks: organization-by-process or organization-by-material. Although there is fairly strong evidence for organization-by-process models from event-related fMRI studies, some investigators argue that the nature of the stimulus material better defines the functional organization of the lateral PFC, particularly in more ventral regions (BA 47/45/44). Specifically, the anterior region of the ventrolateral PFC (BA 47/45) is hypothesized to subserve semantic processing while the posterior region (BA 44) may subserve phonological processing. In the current event-related fMRI study, we directly compared process-related versus material-related organizational principles in a verbal working memory task. Subjects performed a modified delayed response task in which they (1) retained a list of five words or five nonwords during the delay period (“maintenance”), or (2) performed a semantic (size reordering) or phonological (alphabetical reordering) task on the word or nonword lists, respectively (“manipulation”). We did not find evidence during the delay period of our task to support claims of anterior-posterior specializations in the ventrolateral PFC for semantic versus phonological processing. Subjects did, however, display greater neuronal activity during the delay period of manipulation trials than maintenance trials in both the dorsolateral PFC and posterior ventrolateral regions. These data are more consistent with the process model of the organization of lateral PFC in verbal working memory.


Author(s):  
Jörg-Tobias Kuhn ◽  
Elena Ise ◽  
Julia Raddatz ◽  
Christin Schwenk ◽  
Christian Dobel

Abstract. Objective: 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. Method: 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. Results: 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. Conclusions: DD and AS appear to be related to largely distinct patterns of cognitive deficits, which are present in combination in children with DD+AS.



2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-249
Author(s):  
Xuezhu Ren ◽  
Tengfei Wang ◽  
Karl Schweizer ◽  
Jing Guo

Abstract. Although attention control accounts for a unique portion of the variance in working memory capacity (WMC), the way in which attention control contributes to WMC has not been thoroughly specified. The current work focused on fractionating attention control into distinctly different executive processes and examined to what extent key processes of attention control including updating, shifting, and prepotent response inhibition were related to WMC and whether these relations were different. A number of 216 university students completed experimental tasks of attention control and two measures of WMC. Latent variable analyses were employed for separating and modeling each process and their effects on WMC. The results showed that both the accuracy of updating and shifting were substantially related to WMC while the link from the accuracy of inhibition to WMC was insignificant; on the other hand, only the speed of shifting had a moderate effect on WMC while neither the speed of updating nor the speed of inhibition showed significant effect on WMC. The results suggest that these key processes of attention control exhibit differential effects on individual differences in WMC. The approach that combined experimental manipulations and statistical modeling constitutes a promising way of investigating cognitive processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 228 (4) ◽  
pp. 244-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Kälin ◽  
Claudia M. Roebers

Abstract. Repeatedly, the notion has been put forward that metacognition (MC) and executive functions (EF) share common grounds, as both describe higher order cognitive processes and involve monitoring. However, only few studies addressed this issue empirically and so far their findings are rather inconsistent. Addressing the question whether measurement differences may in part be responsible for the mixed results, the current study included explicitly reported as well as time-based measures of metacognitive monitoring and related them to EF. A total of 202 children aged 4–6 years were assessed in terms of EF (inhibition, working memory, shifting) and monitoring. While there was no significant link between explicitly reported confidence and EF, latencies of monitoring judgments were significantly related to time- and accuracy-based measures of EF. Our findings support the association between EF and MC and the assumption that better inhibition abilities help children to engage in more thorough monitoring.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Oberauer ◽  
Stephan Lewandowsky

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christelle Robert ◽  
Delphine Fagot ◽  
Thierry Lecerf ◽  
Anik de Ribaupierre

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