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Working memory (WM) training, typically entailing repetitive practice with one or two tasks, has mostly yielded only limited task-specific transfer effects. We developed and tested a new WM training approach where the task paradigm, stimulus type, and predictability of the stimulus sequence were constantly altered during the 4-week training period. We expected that this varied training protocol would generate more extensive transfer by facilitating the use of more general strategies that could be applied to a range of WM tasks. Pre-post transfer effects following varied training (VT group, n = 60) were compared against traditional training (TT group, training a single adaptive WM task, n = 63), and active controls (AC, n = 65). As expected, TT evidenced strong task-specific near transfer as compared to AC. In turn, VT exhibited task-specific near transfer only on one of the measures, and only as compared to the TT group. Critically, no evidence for task-general near transfer or far transfer effects was observed. In sum, the present form of VT failed to demonstrate broader transfer. Nevertheless, as VT has met with success in other cognitive domains, future studies should probe if and how it would be possible to design WM training protocols that promote structural learning where common features of specific tasks would be identified and utilised when selecting strategies for novel memory tasks.

Impaired verbal ‘phonological’ short-term memory is considered a cardinal feature of the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia (lv-PPA) and is assumed to underpin most of the language deficits in this syndrome. Clinically, examination of verbal short-term memory in individuals presenting with PPA is common practice and serves two objectives: (i) to help understand the possible mechanisms underlying the patient’s language profile and (ii) to help differentiate lv-PPA from other PPA variants or from other dementia syndromes. Distinction between lv-PPA and the non-fluent variant of PPA (nfv-PPA), however, can be especially challenging due to overlapping language profiles and comparable psychometric performances on verbal short-term memory tests. Here, we present case vignettes of the three PPA variants (lv-PPA, nfv-PPA, and the semantic variant (sv-PPA)) and typical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These vignettes provide a detailed description of the short-term and working memory profiles typically found in these patients and highlight how speech output and language comprehension deficits across the PPA variants differentially interfere with verbal memory performance. We demonstrate that a combination of verbal short-term and working memory measures provides crucial information regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying language disturbances in PPA. In addition, we propose that analogous visuospatial span tasks are essential for the assessment of PPA as they measure memory capacity without language contamination.

Foreign language learning in older age has been proposed as a promising avenue for combatting age-related cognitive decline. We tested this hypothesis in a randomized controlled study in a sample of 160 healthy older participants (aged 65-75 years) who were randomized to 11 weeks of either language learning or relaxation training. Participants in the language learning condition obtained some basic knowledge in the new language (Italian), but between-groups differences in improvements on latent factors of verbal intelligence, spatial intelligence, working memory, item memory, or associative memory were negligible. We argue that this is not due to either poor measurement, low course intensity, or low statistical power, but that basic studies in foreign languages in older age are likely to have no or trivially small effects on cognitive abilities. We place this in the context of the cognitive training and engagement literature and conclude that while foreign language learning may expand the behavioral repertoire, it does little to improve cognitive processing abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

This study developed and gained insight in an auditory Stroop test, implementable in cognitive hearing sciences.An auditory Stroop test was developed and performed in 178 participants, aged between 18 and 69 years. This Auditory Stroop test consisted of two tests: Stroop-tones and Stroop-words whereby the pitch of pure-tones and spoken words (i.e., the words high and low) had to be identified by high or low, respectively. An interference score was calculated as a measure of verbal executive functioning. Regression models were conducted to examine the effect of age, sex, education, awakeness, hearing, as well as visual and verbal working memory, and processing speed on the auditory Stroop scores. Normative data were obtained per age decade.Compared to the visual counterparts, the auditory Stroop outcomes were better predicted by verbal working memory and processing speed. A trend was observed showing a decrease in performances with increasing age. No other participant-related variables had a significant relationship with the auditory Stroop test.This auditory Stroop test was considered a good test for measuring executive functioning using auditory stimuli. Implementing this auditory Stroop test within cognitive hearing sciences will contribute to unravel the auditory-cognitive perspective of speech understanding.Este estudio desarrolló y alcanzó un claro entendimiento en una prueba auditiva de Stroop, implementable en las ciencias auditivas cognitivas.Se desarrolló un test auditivo de Stroop y se aplicó en 178 participantes entre los 18 y los 69 años de edad. Este test auditivo de Stroop constaba dos pruebas, a saber: Stroop-tonos y Stroop-palabras. El tono de los tonos puros y de las palabras habladas (es decir, las palabras alto y bajo) tenían que ser identificadas por alto o bajo, respectivamente. Se calculó una puntuación de interferencia como medida del funcionamiento ejecutivo verbal. Se realizaron modelos de regresión para examinar el efecto de la edad, el sexo, la educación, la vigilia, la audición, así como la memoria de trabajo visual y verbal y la velocidad de procesamiento en todas las puntuaciones auditivas de Stroop. Se obtuvieron datos normativos por década.Los resultados del Stroop auditivo podrían predecirse mejor por la memoria de trabajo verbal y la velocidad de procesamiento en comparación con las contrapartes visuales. Se observó una tendencia que mostraba una disminución de los resultados con el aumento de la edad. Ninguna otra variable relacionada con los participantes parecía tener una relación significativa con la prueba auditiva de Stroop.Este test auditivo de Stroop se consideró una buena prueba para medir el funcionamiento ejecutivo utilizando estímulos auditivos. La aplicación de esta prueba auditiva de Stroop dentro de las ciencias auditivas cognitivas contribuirá a desentrañar la perspectiva auditivo-cognitiva de la comprensión del habla.

Currently, a distributed bilateral network of frontal-parietal areas is regarded as the neural substrate of working memory (WM), with the verbal WM network being more left-lateralized. This conclusion is based primarily on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data that provides correlational evidence for brain regions involved in a task. However, fMRI cannot differentiate the areas that are fundamentally required for performing a task. These data can only come from brain-injured individuals who fail the task after the loss of specific brain areas. In addition to the lack of complimentary data, is the issue of the variety in the WM tasks used to assess verbal WM. When different tasks are assumed to measure the same behavior, this may mask the contributions of different brain regions. Here, we investigated the neural substrate of WM by using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in 49 individuals with stroke-induced left hemisphere brain injuries. These participants completed two different verbal WM tasks: complex listening span and a word 2-back task. Behavioral results indicated that the two tasks were only slightly related, while the VLSM analysis revealed different critical regions associated with each task. Specifically, significant detriments in performance on the complex span task were found with lesions in the inferior frontal gyrus, while for the 2-back task, significant deficits were seen after injury to the superior and middle temporal gyri. Thus, the two tasks depend on the structural integrity of different, non-overlapping frontal and temporal brain regions, suggesting distinct neural and cognitive mechanisms triggered by the two tasks: rehearsal and cue-dependent selection in the complex span task, versus updating/auditory recognition in the 2-back task. These findings call into question the common practice of using these two tasks interchangeably in verbal WM research and undermine the legitimacy of aggregating data from studies with different WM tasks. Thus, the present study points out the importance of lesion studies in complementing functional neuroimaging findings and highlights the need to consider task demands in neuroimaging and neuropsychological investigations of WM.

Cognitive assessment in natural group settings facilitates data collection but poses threats to the validity. In this study, tablet‐based working memory (WM) tasks, the counting span, and reading span were used in predicting 12‐year‐old children's (N = 837) scholastic skills and fluid intelligence in a classroom with environmental noise. WM tasks had excellent internal consistency, correlated with scholastic skills, and accounted for more of the variance in cognitive performance (grade point average, fluid intelligence, scholastic skills) compared with individually administered (n = 190) digit span task. Furthermore, the multilevel analysis revealed that compared with the classrooms with no noise, when naturally occurring speech or nonspeech types of environmental noises were present during assessment, WM scores or the reliability estimates were not lower. In contrast, when both types of noises were present, the relationships between some of the WM and achievement scores were even stronger. Thus, assessments in natural classroom contexts may promote revealing the individual differences in WM.

Mixing examples of different categories (interleaving) has been shown to promote inductive learning as compared with presenting examples of the same category together (massing). In three studies, we tested whether the advantage of interleaving is exclusively due to the mixing of examples from different categories or to the temporal gap introduced between presentations. In addition, we also tested the role of working memory capacity (WMC). Results showed that the mixing of examples might be the key component that determines improved induction. WMC might also be involved in the interleaving effect: participants with high spans seemed to profit more than participants with low spans from interleaved presentations. Our findings have relevant implications for education. Practice schedules should be individually customised so society as a whole can profit from differences between learners. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

In developmental research on memory, the model of working memory of Baddeley and Hitch (1974, Baddeley, 1986) is the theory most often referred to. This theory has played an important role in studies on human learning in general. However, it is not clear how the verbal and visual short term memory systems develop. In order to investigate this development, we argue that some important issues should be taken into account; a longitudinal research design and individual differences between children. The current study is a follow-up study in which we investigated the transitions that a subsample of 30 children made between verbal and visual processing during the course of one year. Our results showed that the children showed large variation in STM processes and did not move from one type of processing to another in a consistent manner. This implies that the development of the verbal and visual STM systems may be less predictable than expected based on the literature, stressing the importance to be cautious when individual differences between children are not taken into account.

The relationship between the ability to maintain task goals and working memory capacity (WMC) is firmly established, but evidence for WMC-related differences in conflict processing is mixed. We investigated whether WMC (measured using two complex-span tasks) mediates differences in adjustments of cognitive control in response to conflict. Participants performed a Simon task in which congruent and incongruent trials were equiprobable, but in which the proportion of congruency repetitions (congruent trials followed by congruent trials or incongruent trials followed by incongruent trials) and thus the need for trial-by-trial adjustments in cognitive control varied by block. The overall Simon effect did not depend on WMC capacity. However, for the low-WMC participants the Simon effect decreased as the proportion of congruency repetitions decreased, whereas for the high- and average-WMC participants it was relatively constant across conditions. Distribution analysis of the Simon effect showed more evidence for the inhibition of stimulus location in the low- than in the high-WMC participants, especially when the proportion of congruency repetitions was low. We hypothesize that low-WMC individuals exhibit more interference from task-irrelevant information due to weaker preparatory control prior to stimulus presentation and, thus, stronger reliance on reactive recruitment of cognitive control.

Verbal short-term memory, as indexed by immediate serial recall tasks (in which participants must recall several stimuli in order, immediately after presentation), develops considerably across middle childhood. One explanation for this age-related change is that children's ability to rehearse verbal material increases during this period, and one particularly influential version of this account is that only older children engage in any form of rehearsal. In this article, we critique evidence that is used to support the claim of age-related change in rehearsal and also critique the argument that children do not rehearse when engaged in immediate serial recall. This is not to say that rehearsal does not develop with age or that it is not required in any task, but to suggest that it plays little role in the development of verbal short-term memory performance as traditionally measured.

International audience; This paper attempts to evaluate the capacity of immediate memory to cope with new situations in relation to the compressibility of information likely to allow the formation of chunks. We constructed a task in which untrained participants had to immediately recall sequences of stimuli with possible associations between them. Compressibility of information was used to measure the chunkability of each sequence on a single trial. Compressibility refers to the recoding of information in a more compact representation. Although compressibility has almost exclusively been used to study long-term memory, our theory suggests that a compression process relying on redundancies within the structure of the list materials can occur very rapidly in immediate memory. The results indicated a span of about three items when the list had no structure, but increased linearly as structure was added. The amount of information retained in immediate memory was maximal for the most compressible sequences, particularly when information was ordered in a way that facilitated the compression process. We discuss the role of immediate memory in the rapid formation of chunks made up of new associations that did not already exist in long-term memory, and we conclude that immediate memory is the starting place for the reorganization of information.

The receptive language measure information-carrying word (ICW) level, is used extensively by speech and language therapists in the UK and Ireland. Despite this it has never been validated via its relationship to any other relevant measures. This study aims to validate the ICW measure by investigating the relationship between the receptive ICW score of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their performance on standardized memory and language assessments. Twenty-seven children with SLI, aged between 5; 07 and 8; 11, completed a sentence comprehension task in which the instructions gradually increased in number of ICWs. The children also completed subtests from The Working Memory Test Battery for children and The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4. Results showed that there was a significant positive relationship between both language and memory measures and children's ICW score. While both receptive and expressive language were significant in their contribution to children's ICW score, the contribution of memory was solely determined by children's working memory ability. ICW score is in fact a valid measure of the language ability of children with SLI. However therapists should also be cognisant of its strong association with working memory when using this construct in assessment or intervention methods.

In spite of a large body of empirical research demonstrating the importance of multisensory integration in cognition, there is still little research about multimodal encoding and maintenance effects in working memory. In this study we investigated multimodal encoding in working memory by means of an immediate serial recall task with different modality and format conditions. In a first non-verbal condition participants were presented with sequences of non-verbal inputs representing familiar (concrete) objects, either in visual, auditory or audio-visual formats. In a second verbal condition participants were presented with written, spoken, or bimodally presented words denoting the same objects represented by pictures or sounds in the non-verbal condition. The effects of articulatory suppression were assessed in both conditions. We found a bimodal superiority effect on memory span with non-verbal material, and a larger span with auditory (or bimodal) versus visual presentation with verbal material, with a significant effect of articulatory suppression in the two conditions.

In three experiments, we investigated Hebb repetition learning (HRL) differences between children and adults, as a function of the type of item (lexical vs. sub-lexical) and the level of item-overlap between sequences. In a first experiment, it was shown that when non-repeating and repeating (Hebb) sequences of words were all permutations of the same words, HRL was slower than when the sequences shared no words. This item-overlap effect was observed in both children and adults. In a second experiment, we used syllable sequences and we observed reduced HRL due to item-overlap only in children. The findings are explained within a chunking account of the HRL effect on the basis of which we hypothesize that children, compared with adults, chunk syllable sequences in smaller units. By hypothesis, small chunks are more prone to interference from anagram representations included in the filler sequences, potentially explaining the item-overlap effect in children. This hypothesis was tested in a third experiment with adults where we experimentally manipulated the chunk size by embedding pauses in the syllable sequences. Interestingly, we showed that imposing a small chunk size caused adults to show the same behavioral effects as those observed in children. Departing from the analogy between verbal HRL and lexical development, the results are discussed in light of the less-is-more hypothesis of age-related differences in language acquisition.

Elementary school children with reading disabilities (RD; n = 17), mathematical disabilities (MD; n = 22), or combined reading and mathematical disabilities (RD+MD; n = 28) were compared to average achieving (AA; n = 45) peers on working memory measures. On all working memory components, 2 (RD vs. no RD) x 2 (MD vs. no MD) factorial ANCOVAs revealed clear differences between children with and without RD. Children with MD had lower span scores than the AA children on measures of the phonological loop and the central executive. A significant interaction effect between RD and MD was found only for listening recall and had a small, partial effect size. In addition, analyses showed that the best logistic regression model consisted of a visuospatial and a central executive task. The model significantly distinguished between the AA and clinical groups and between the MD and RD+MD groups. Evidence was found for domain-general working memory problems in children with learning disabilities. Management of working memory loads in structured learning activities in the classroom, at home, or during therapy may help these children to cope with their problems in a more profound manner.

There is an important debate in the literature about the possible causes of developmental increases in working-memory span scores. In the present study, we tested the role of structure in relation to the age-related increases in visuo-spatial span performance. To that end, children and adults between nine and nineteen years old conducted structured and unstructured versions of the Corsi blocks task. All age groups performed better on structured than on unstructured paths, which indicates that working-memory control processes recruit resources such as long-term memory knowledge in performing the visuo-spatial span task. Interestingly, older participants benefited more from the presented structure than did younger participants, indicating that the structured presentation of sequence paths enhances the development of visuo-spatial span performance. Additional analyses showed that the effect of structure was not attributable to other path characteristics such as the path length or the number of path crossings. Implications of the present findings for views on the development of visuo-spatial working memory are discussed.

The attentional blink (AB) is a well-established phenomenon in the study of attention. This deficit in reporting the second of two targets presented in rapid serial visual presentation when it occurs 200-500 ms after the first is considered to reflect a fundamental limitation in attentional processing. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show an AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between blinkers and non-blinkers. One possibility is that non-blinkers may have a larger WM capacity, allowing better attentional control. Here we explore the relation between the magnitude of the AB, general intelligence, and different measures of working memory (WM) and short-term memory (STM) capacity. Surprisingly, no correlation was found between memory capacity measures and AB magnitude, raising doubts about the generalizability of earlier findings of such a relationship.

Short-term memory (STM) refers to systems which provide retention of limited amounts of material for a limited time period (seconds). Most investigated systems include Phonological, Spatial, and Visual STM, while STM storage exists also in other domains, as the somatosensory system. STM includes storage and rehearsal components, with the latter providing maintenance of events in memory against short-term forgetting. Discrete brain regions support STM, with left hemisphere posterior parietal and premotor frontal networks being more involved in Phonological STM, and right hemisphere regions in spatial STM. STM contributes to learning of new information and aspects of speech comprehension and production.