scholarly journals Maintenance Mechanisms in Children’s Verbal Working Memory

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Laure Oftinger ◽  
Valerie Camos
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
Joint Contribution

<p>Previous research in adults has indicated two maintenance mechanisms of verbal information in working memory, i.e., articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing. However, only three studies have examined their joint contribution to children’s verbal working memory. The present study aimed at extending this line of research by investigating the developmental changes occurring from 6 to 9 years old. In two experiments using complex span tasks, children of three different age groups maintained letters or words while performing a concurrent task. The opportunity for attentional refreshing was manipulated by varying the attentional demand of the concurrent task. Moreover, this task was performed either silently by pressing keys or aloud, the latter inducing a concurrent articulation. As expected, recall performance increased strongly with age. More interestingly, concurrent articulation had a detrimental effect on recall even in 6-year-old children. Similarly, introducing a concurrent attention-demanding task impaired recall performance at all ages. Finally, the effect of the availability of rehearsal and of attentional refreshing never interacted at any age. This suggested an independence of the two mechanisms in the maintenance of verbal information in children’s working memory. Implications for the development of rehearsal use and for the role of attention in working memory are discussed.</p>

scholarly journals Visuospatial working memory and the construction of a spatial situation model in listening comprehension: An examination using a spatial tapping task

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Lin ◽  
Norio Matsumi
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Situation Model ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Visuospatial Working Memory ◽  
Impaired Performance ◽  
Dual Task Performance

AbstractThe present study investigated how visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is involved in the construction of a spatial situation model for spatial passages presented auditorily. A simple spatial tapping condition, a complex tapping condition as a target-tracking task, and a control condition, were used to analyze the role of VSWM. To understand how individuals who differ in verbal working memory (VWM) capacity (determined with a listening span test) process spatial text during dual-task performance, individual differences in VWM capacity were analyzed. In two experiments, the participants listened to a spatial text at the same time as performing a spatial concurrent task or no concurrent task. The results of the free recall test in Experiment 1 showed that there were no differences between the tapping conditions in the high VWM capacity group; the low VWM capacity group had a lower performance in both spatial tapping tasks compared to the control condition. The results of the map drawing test in Experiment 2 showed that complex spatial tapping impaired performance in comparison to simple spatial tapping and the control condition in the high VWM capacity group; in the low VWM capacity group, both spatial tapping tasks impaired recall performance. In addition, the participants with high VWM capacity demonstrated better performance. Overall, the results suggest that individuals with high VWM capacity have more resources to process verbal and spatial information than those with low VWM capacity, indicating that VWM capacity is related to the degree of the involvement of VSWM.

scholarly journals Measuring verbal working memory capacity: A reading span task for laboratory and web-based use

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Klaus ◽  
Herbert Schriefers
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Span Task ◽  
Reading Span ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Extreme Groups ◽  
Span Tasks

Typically, working memory (WM) capacity as a source of individual differences is assessed by complex span tasks which combine a processing and a storage task. However, there are no standardized open-source versions, and the tasks that are used are not easily comparable. We introduce a browser-based version of the reading span task, which yielded normally distributed recall performance scores. Next, we provide a within-participant comparison of this task to two other complex span tasks. Finally, we introduce a web-based version of the reading span task. WM scores were comparable to those obtained in the laboratory, but web participants were also faster and made more mistakes in the processing task. We conclude that the task introduced here is an adequate way to measure verbal WM capacity in the laboratory. In addition, it may prove to be a useful, time-efficient online tool, for instance to extract extreme groups from a larger sample.

Developmental improvement in strategies to maintain verbal information in working memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Laure Oftinger ◽  
Valérie Camos
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Retention Interval ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Attentional Demand ◽  
Maintenance Strategies ◽  
Strategy Changes

Although it has been proposed that maintenance of verbal information in adults’ working memory relies on two strategies, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, little is known about the interplay of these strategies in children. To examine strategy changes around the age of seven, children were asked to maintain digits during a retention interval introduced between encoding and recall. In Experiment 1, this interval was either unfilled in a delayed span task or filled with an attention-demanding task in a Brown-Peterson task. This concurrent task was either silent or aloud to vary the availability of rehearsal. Experiment 2 introduced variation in the attentional demand of the concurrent task, and an independent concurrent articulation. As predicted, recall performance was better in older children, but was reduced under concurrent articulation or when attention was less available, bringing further evidence in favor of two maintenance strategies. Moreover, the measure of the availability of attention for refreshing was correlated with recall performance in eight- and seven-year-olds, though only when rehearsal was impeded for seven-year-olds, but it did not correlate with six-year-olds’ recall. This could suggest that rehearsal is the default strategy in young children who can adaptively switch to refreshing when articulatory processes are unavailable.

On the sources of forgetting in working memory: The test of competing hypotheses

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (8) ◽  
pp. 1714-1733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Barrouillet ◽  
Kim Uittenhove ◽  
Annalisa Lucidi ◽  
Naomi Langerock
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Free Time ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Temporal Decay ◽  
Concurrent Processing ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
Unique Source

Whether forgetting from working memory (WM) is only due to interference or is also caused by temporal decay is still a matter of debate. In the present study, this question was examined using complex span tasks in which each memory item was followed by a series of processing episodes, the duration and number of which were varied. It is known that recall performance in these tasks depends on the cognitive load ( CL) of concurrent processing conceived as the ratio between processing time and free time, higher CL resulting in lower spans. The decay-and-refresh hypothesis accounts for this effect by assuming that memory traces decay during processing but are refreshed during free time. This hypothesis predicts lower recall performance with longer processing episodes, but no effect of their number as long as CL remains constant. The interference-only hypothesis supposes that free time is used to alleviate the interference created by processing distractors. This hypothesis is potentially compatible with an effect of the duration of processing episodes through increased interference, but predicts a detrimental effect of their number. In three experiments, the recall pattern fitted the predictions of the decay-and-refresh hypothesis for verbal WM, but that of the interference-only hypothesis for visuospatial WM. Although the entire pattern of data is more easily accommodated by the decay-and-refresh hypothesis than by its interference-only contender, our results suggest that it is unwise to aim at identifying a unique source to a complex phenomenon like WM forgetting.

The Working Memory of Musicians and Nonmusicians

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Talamini ◽  
Barbara Carretti ◽  
Massimo Grassi
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Sensory Modality ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Concurrent Task ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
And Task

Musicians have superior performances compared to nonmusicians in many auditory perception tasks. This superiority extends to memory tasks such as the digit span. Literature suggests that the musicians’ advantage unfolds along two axes: sensory modality (musicians perform better when the task is auditory) and task complexity (musicians tend to perform better in the forward and not — for example — backward digit span). In addition, it is unclear whether there are specific music abilities linked with improved performance in the digit span. Here, musicians and nonmusicians performed a digit span task that was presented aurally, visually, or audiovisually. The task was performed with or without a concurrent task (i.e., articulatory suppression) in order to explore the role of rehearsal strategies and also manipulate task complexity. Finally, music abilities of all participants were assessed using the Profile of Music Perception Skills (PROMS) test. Musicians had larger spans than nonmusicians regardless of the sensory modality and the concurrent task. In addition, the auditory and audiovisual spans (but not visual) were correlated with one subscale of the PROMS test. Findings suggest a general advantage of musicians over nonmusicians in verbal working memory tasks, with a possible role of sensory modality and task complexity.

Articulatory Rehearsal Is More Than Refreshing Memory Traces

2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryoji Nishiyama ◽  
Jun Ukita
Keyword(s):  
Free Recall ◽  
Recall Performance ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Free Recall Task ◽  
Study Item ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Serial Position Curves

This study examined whether additional articulatory rehearsal induced temporary durability of phonological representations, using a 10-s delayed nonword free recall task. Three experiments demonstrated that cumulative rehearsal between the offset of the last study item and the start of the filled delay (Experiments 1 and 3) and a fixed rehearsal of the immediate item during the subsequent interstimulus interval (Experiments 2 and 3) improved free recall performance. These results suggest that an additional rehearsal helps to stabilize phonological representations for a short period. Furthermore, the analyses of serial position curves suggested that the frequency of the articulation affected the durability of the phonological representation. The significance of these findings as clues of the mechanism maintaining verbal information (i.e., verbal working memory) is discussed.

scholarly journals Dissociable Mechanisms of Verbal Working Memory Revealed through Multivariate Lesion Mapping

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 2542-2554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Ghaleh ◽  
Elizabeth H Lacey ◽  
Mackenzie E Fama ◽  
Zainab Anbari ◽  
Andrew T DeMarco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Task Conditions

Abstract Two maintenance mechanisms with separate neural systems have been suggested for verbal working memory: articulatory-rehearsal and non-articulatory maintenance. Although lesion data would be key to understanding the essential neural substrates of these systems, there is little evidence from lesion studies that the two proposed mechanisms crucially rely on different neuroanatomical substrates. We examined 39 healthy adults and 71 individuals with chronic left-hemisphere stroke to determine if verbal working memory tasks with varying demands would rely on dissociable brain structures. Multivariate lesion–symptom mapping was used to identify the brain regions involved in each task, controlling for spatial working memory scores. Maintenance of verbal information relied on distinct brain regions depending on task demands: sensorimotor cortex under higher demands and superior temporal gyrus (STG) under lower demands. Inferior parietal cortex and posterior STG were involved under both low and high demands. These results suggest that maintenance of auditory information preferentially relies on auditory-phonological storage in the STG via a nonarticulatory maintenance when demands are low. Under higher demands, sensorimotor regions are crucial for the articulatory rehearsal process, which reduces the reliance on STG for maintenance. Lesions to either of these regions impair maintenance of verbal information preferentially under the appropriate task conditions.

scholarly journals Working memory and high-level cognition in children: An analysis of timing and accuracy in complex span tasks

2020 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 104736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gordon ◽  
James H. Smith-Spark ◽  
Elizabeth J. Newton ◽  
Lucy A. Henry
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
High Level

Measuring Working Memory Capacity With Automated Complex Span Tasks

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Redick ◽  
James M. Broadway ◽  
Matt E. Meier ◽  
Princy S. Kuriakose ◽  
Nash Unsworth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Normative Data ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Reading Span ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Adult Participants ◽  
Span Tasks

Individual differences in working memory capacity are related to a variety of behaviors both within and outside of the lab. Recently developed automated complex span tasks have contributed to increasing our knowledge concerning working memory capacity by making valid and reliable assessments freely available for use by researchers. Combining the samples from three testing locations yielded data from over 6,000 young adult participants who performed at least one of three such tasks (Operation, Symmetry, and Reading Span). Normative data are presented here for researchers interested in applying cutoffs for their own applications, and information on the validity and reliability of the tasks is also reported. In addition, the data were analyzed as a function of sex and college status. While automated complex span tasks are just one way to measure working memory capacity, the use of a standardized procedure for administration and scoring greatly facilitates comparison across studies.

scholarly journals Are all interferences bad? Bilingual advantages in working memory are modulated by varying demands for controlled processing

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
HWAJIN YANG ◽  
SUJIN YANG
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Span Task ◽  
General Control ◽  
Baseline Measure ◽  
Complex Span ◽  
Operation Span ◽  
Controlled Processing ◽  
Span Tasks ◽  
Font Color

We investigated bilingual advantages in general control abilities using three complex-span tasks of working memory (WM). An operation-span task served as a baseline measure of WM capacity. Additionally, two modified versions of the Stroop-span task were designed to place varying attentional-control demands during memoranda encoding by asking participants either to read the to-be-remembered item aloud (lower cognitive control; i.e., Stroop-span task) or to name the font color of the to-be-remembered item while still encoding the word for later recall (greater cognitive control; i.e., attention-impeded Stroop-span task). Twenty-six Korean–English bilinguals and 25 English-native monolinguals were tested. We found that bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on the attention-impeded Stroop-span task, but on neither the operation-span nor the Stroop-span task. Our findings demonstrate that bilingualism provides advantages in controlled processing, an important component of WM and other executive functions, suggesting that the demand for controlled processing in WM tasks moderates bilingual effects on WM.

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