scholarly journals Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rhodes ◽  
Jason M Doherty ◽  
Agnieszka J Jaroslawska ◽  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Clément Belletier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Previous Experiment ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Initial Finding ◽  
Dual Tasking ◽  
Adjustment Procedure ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Other Information

Working memory is defined by many as the system that allows us to simultaneously store information over brief time periods while engaging in other information processing activities. In a previous study (Rhodes et al., 2019) we found that retention of serially presented letters was disrupted by the introduction of an arithmetic processing task during a 10 second delay period. Importantly, the magnitude of this dual task disruption increased with age from 18 to 81. The demands of each task were adjusted prior to dual task so that age differences did not reflect baseline differences in single task performance. Motivated by these findings, theories of working memory, and additional analyses of processing reaction times from this previous experiment, we report two experiments, using the same tasks and adjustment procedure, attempting to modulate the magnitude of age differences in dual task effects via manipulations focused on time for encoding to-be-remembered material. Providing a delay prior to processing activities, to facilitate switching between the two tasks, did not modulate age differences. Neither did separating the to-be-remembered material temporally, to allow for the creation of more distinct representations. These findings provide two replications of our initial finding and suggest that age differences in working memory dual tasking are not due to limitations in the speed of encoding.

scholarly journals Toward Objective Evaluation of Working Memory in Visualizations: A Case Study Using Pupillometry and a Dual-Task Paradigm

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lace Padilla ◽  
Spencer Castro ◽  
Q. Samuel Quinan ◽  
Ian Tanner Ruginski ◽  
Sarah Creem-Regehr
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Objective Evaluation ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Dual Tasking ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Relative Differences

Cognitive science has established widely used and validated procedures for evaluating working memory in numerous applied domains, but surprisingly few studies have employed these methodologies to assess claims about the impacts of visualizations on working memory. The lack of information visualization research that uses validated procedures for measuring working memory may be due, in part, to the absence of cross-domain methodological guidance tailored explicitly to the unique needs of visualization research. This paper presents a set of clear, practical, and empirically validated methods for evaluating working memory during visualization tasks and provides readers with guidance in selecting an appropriate working memory evaluation paradigm. As a case study, we illustrate multiple methods for evaluating working memory in a visual-spatial aggregation task with geospatial data. The results show that the use of dual-task experimental designs (simultaneous performance of several tasks compared to single-task performance) and pupil dilation can reveal working memory demands associated with task difficulty and dual-tasking. In a dual-task experimental design, measures of task completion times and pupillometry revealed the working memory demands associated with both task difficulty and dual-tasking. Pupillometry demonstrated that participants’ pupils were significantly larger when they were completing a more difficult task and when multitasking. We propose that researchers interested in the relative differences in working memory between visualizations should consider a converging methods approach, where physiological measures and behavioral measures of working memory are employed to generate a rich evaluation of visualization effort.

scholarly journals Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs.

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rhodes ◽  
Jason M. Doherty ◽  
Agnieszka J. Jaroslawska ◽  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Clément Belletier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Temporal Factors

scholarly journals What affects the magnitude of age-related dual-task costs in working memory? The role of stimulus domain and access to semantic representations

2020 ◽  
pp. 174702182097074
Author(s):  
Agnieszka J Jaroslawska ◽  
Stephen Rhodes ◽  
Clément Belletier ◽  
Jason M Doherty ◽  
Nelson Cowan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Semantic Representations ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Concurrent Processing ◽  
Age Related

Although there is evidence that the effect of including a concurrent processing demand on the storage of information in working memory is disproportionately larger for older than younger adults, not all studies show this age-related impairment, and the critical factors responsible for any such impairment remain elusive. Here we assess whether domain overlap between storage and processing activities, and access to semantic representations, are important determinants of performance in a sample of younger and older adults ( N = 119). We developed four versions of a processing task by manipulating the type of stimuli involved (either verbal or non-verbal) and the decision that participants had to make about the stimuli presented on the screen. Participants either had to perform a spatial judgement, in deciding whether the verbal or non-verbal item was presented above or below the centre of the screen, or a semantic judgement, in deciding whether the stimulus refers to something living or not living. The memory task was serial-ordered recall of visually presented letters. The study revealed a large increase in age-related memory differences when concurrent processing was required. These differences were smaller when storage and processing activities both used verbal materials. Dual-task effects on processing were also disproportionate for older adults. Age differences in processing performance appeared larger for tasks requiring spatial decisions rather than semantic decisions. We discuss these findings in relation to three competing frameworks of working memory and the extant literature on cognitive ageing.

The Altered Brain Activation of Phonological Working Memory, Dual Tasking, and Distraction Among Participants With Adult ADHD and the Effect of the MAOA Polymorphism

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chih-Hung Ko ◽  
Tsyh-Jyi Hsieh ◽  
Peng-Wei Wang ◽  
Wei-Chen Lin ◽  
Cheng-Sheng Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Frontal Lobe ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Adult Adhd ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Monoamine Oxidase A ◽  
Dual Tasking ◽  
Phonological Working Memory ◽  
Pars Opercularis ◽  
The Brain

Objective: The present study aimed to reveal the brain correlates of phonological working memory (WM), dual tasking, and distraction in adult ADHD combined with the effect of polymorphisms of monoamine oxidase A ( MAOA rs1137070 Asp470Asp). Method: A total of 29 participants with adult ADHD and 21 controls were recruited. They completed 0-back and 2-back tasks, as wells as 2-back tasks with a dual-task effect or a distracting effect, during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Results: The brain activation of WM in the bilateral inferior frontal lobe, pars opercularis, was higher among the adult ADHD group. The genotype of MAOA significantly interacted with the ADHD effect in the left inferior frontal lobe, pars opercularis. Adults with ADHD had higher activation in the left lingual area in response to the dual-tasking effect. Conclusion: The MAOA polymorphism moderated the altered activation in pars opercularis for WM among adults with ADHD. The higher lingual gyrus activation might indicate that higher attention resources are demanded to sustain the dual-task function of adults with ADHD.

scholarly journals Child-Like Adults: Dual-Task Effects on Collective vs. Distributive Sentence Interpretations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. B. de Koster ◽  
Petra Hendriks ◽  
Jennifer K. Spenader
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Conversational Implicature ◽  
Recent Proposal ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Collective Preference ◽  
Memory Resources

In this work, we consider a recent proposal that claims that the preferred interpretation of sentences containing definite plural expressions, such as “The boys are building a snowman,” is not determined by semantic composition but is pragmatically derived via an implicature. Plural expressions can express that each member of a group acts individually (distributive interpretation) or that the group acts together (collective interpretation). While adults prefer collective interpretations for sentences that are not explicitly marked for distributivity by the distributive marker each, children do not show this preference. One explanation is that the adult collective preference for definite plurals arises due to a conversational implicature. If implicature calculation requires memory resources, children may fail to calculate the implicature due to memory limitations. This study investigated whether loading Dutch-speaking adults' working memory, using a dual task, would elicit more child-like distributive interpretations, as would be predicted by the implicature account. We found that loading WM in adults did lead to response patterns more similar to children. We discuss whether our results offer a plausible explanation for children's development of an understanding of distributivity and how our results relate to recent debates on the role of cognitive resources in implicature calculation.

scholarly journals Selection in working memory is resource-demanding: Concurrent task effects on the retro-cue effect

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin-ting Lin ◽  
Edyta Sasin ◽  
Daryl Fougnie
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Secondary Task ◽  
Memory Test ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Dual Task Paradigm ◽  
Tone Discrimination ◽  
Dual Task Interference ◽  
Potential Issue

AbstractIn a retro-cue paradigm, after memorizing a set of objects, people are cued to remember only a subset. Improved memory from the retro-cue suggests that selection processes can benefit items stored in working memory. Does selection in working memory require attention? If so, an attention-demanding task should disrupt retro-cue effects. Studies using a dual-task paradigm have found mixed results, with only one study (Janczyk & Berryhill, Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 76 (3), 715–724, 2014) showing a decreased retro-cue effect by a secondary task. Here we explore a potential issue in that study – the temporal overlap of the secondary task response with the memory test presentation. This raises questions about whether the secondary task was impairing selection processes in memory or was impacting the memory response. We replicated their paradigm by inserting a tone discrimination task at the retro-cue offset, but we also included a condition in which the tone task and the memory test were temporally separated. In Experiment 1, performing the tone task did not impair the retro-cue effect. In Experiment 2, we added an articulatory suppression task as in Janczyk and Berryhill’s study, and we found that the requirement to execute the tone task impaired retro-cue effects. This impairment was independent of whether the tone and memory tasks overlapped. These findings suggest that internal prioritization can be impaired by dual-task interference, but may only occur when such interference is robust enough, for example, due to switching between multiple tasks.

Skipping Breakfast Affects the Early Steps of Cognitive Processing

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Andrés Antonio González-Garrido ◽  
Jacobo José Brofman-Epelbaum ◽  
Fabiola Reveca Gómez-Velázquez ◽  
Sebastián Agustín Balart-Sánchez ◽  
Julieta Ramos-Loyo
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Brain Functioning ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Electrical Brain Activity ◽  
Skipping Breakfast

Abstract. It has been generally accepted that skipping breakfast adversely affects cognition, mainly disturbing the attentional processes. However, the effects of short-term fasting upon brain functioning are still unclear. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skipping breakfast on cognitive processing by studying the electrical brain activity of young healthy individuals while performing several working memory tasks. Accordingly, the behavioral results and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy university students (10 males) were obtained and compared through analysis of variances (ANOVAs), during the performance of three n-back working memory (WM) tasks in two morning sessions on both normal (after breakfast) and 12-hour fasting conditions. Significantly fewer correct responses were achieved during fasting, mainly affecting the higher WM load task. In addition, there were prolonged reaction times with increased task difficulty, regardless of breakfast intake. ERP showed a significant voltage decrement for N200 and P300 during fasting, while the amplitude of P200 notably increased. The results suggest skipping breakfast disturbs earlier cognitive processing steps, particularly attention allocation, early decoding in working memory, and stimulus evaluation, and this effect increases with task difficulty.

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