Measures Of Working Memory Capacity Research Articles

Measuring the Effects of Cognitive Capacity on Sentence Comprehension: Evidence From Elementary School-Age Children.

Our aim was to (a) develop a sentence comprehension measure that distinguished between cognitive capacity and syntactic knowledge in school-age children and (b) examine the relationship between comprehension performance and cognitive variables (working memory capacity and retrieval from long-term memory). We developed and administered a picture selection sentence comprehension task to 122 school-age children representing varied cognitive abilities. We evaluated comprehension accuracy and response time in two syntactically identical conditions but with different cognitive demands incorporated in picture foils-one with low demand using superfluous adjectives and another with high demand using contrastive adjectives. Children also completed tasks measuring working memory capacity and long-term memory retrieval. Comprehension accuracy was significantly lower, and response times were longer in the high-cognitive demand condition compared to the low-demand condition. Errors frequently involved incorrect attribute selection in the high-demand condition that included contrastive adjectives in picture foils, while reversal errors prevailed in the low-demand condition, which included superfluous adjectives. Accuracy correlated positively with the memory variables. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that after adjusting for comprehension in the low-cognitive demand condition (38.60% variance), memory variables accounted for 4.50% additional variance in the high-demand condition with only working memory capacity as the unique predictor. The significant role of working memory capacity in comprehending sentences with high cognitive demand indicated the recruitment of active attention and verbal rehearsal. Data support the newly developed measure's potential for assessing cognitive skills integral to sentence comprehension in school-age children. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26767063.

Mindful Awareness Related to Working Memory Capacity and Response Inhibition

Objectives: This study investigated the associations among trait mindfulness, working memory capacity (WMC), and response inhibition. Mindfulness and WMC are thought to involve goal maintenance while resolving competing responses (inhibition), and studies have indeed found associations among mindfulness, WMC, and response inhibition. However, previous studies focused primarily on behavioral inhibition and many failed to differentiate components of mindfulness (awareness and acceptance). This study examined how self-reported mindfulness (awareness and acceptance) related to performance on tasks of WMC and multiple types of response inhibition (i.e., behavioral inhibition, interference control, and cognitive inhibition). Methods: Sixty-seven undergraduate students (75% female) received extra credit for participation. Measures included the Philadelphia Mindfulness Scale (measuring awareness and acceptance), Hayling Task (cognitive inhibition), go/nogo task (behavioral inhibition), Attention Network Test (interference control), n-back task (WMC), and Automated Reading Span Task (WMC). Results: Higher self-reported awareness was related to stronger performance on two measures of WMC (r =.29; r =.32) and multiple measures of response inhibition, including behavioral inhibition (r = -.25), interference control (r = -.25), and cognitive inhibition (r = -.28); response inhibition and WMC accounted for 22% and 16% of the variance in awareness respectively. No relations were found between self-reported acceptance and cognitive performance. Conclusions: Overall, this study found that the Mindfulness component of higher awareness (but not the component of acceptance) was related to stronger WMC and response inhibition. Because Mindfulness, WMC, and response inhibition are related in unique ways to healthy functioning and wellbeing; learning about how they interact increases scientific understanding, and suggests a direction for potential interventions to target these areas.

Individual differences in working memory capacity and temporal preparation: A secondary reanalysis.

The ability to prepare and maintain an optimal level of preparedness for action, across some unknown duration, is critical for human behavior. Temporal preparation has historically been analyzed in the context of reaction time (RT) experiments where the interval varies between the start of the trial, or foreperiod (FP), and the required response. Two main findings have come out of such paradigms: the variable FP effect (longer RTs to shorter vs. longer FPs) and the sequential FP effect (longer RTs when shorter FPs follow longer FPs). Several theoretical views of these FP effects have been proposed with some suggesting a dissociation while others argue for an implicit process driven by memory traces. One possible method to test these views of FP effects is to examine how individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) moderate such effects. To this end, I reanalyzed data from three studies in which participants completed measures of WMC and a simple RT task with a variable FP. Results suggest that individual differences in WMC were related to the magnitude of the variable FP and the sequential FP effect in two of three individual studies. A "mega-analysis" provided supportive evidence for a relationship between WMC and both forms of FP effects. The present combined experimental-individual differences study provides a novel approach to better understand how and why individuals vary in temporal preparation ability. Through leveraging several large-scale databases unseen in FP research, I provide a new way of understanding FP effects and response timing more generally.

Baseline Pupil Size Seems Unrelated to Fluid Intelligence, Working Memory Capacity, and Attentional Control.

Over the past few years, several studies have explored the relationship between resting-state baseline pupil size and cognitive abilities, including fluid intelligence, working memory capacity, and attentional control. However, the results have been inconsistent. Here we present the findings from two experiments designed to replicate and expand previous research, with the aim of clarifying previous mixed findings. In both experiments, we measured baseline pupil size while participants were not engaged in any tasks, and assessed fluid intelligence using a matrix task. In one experiment we also measured working memory capacity (letter-number-sequencing task) and attentional control (attentional-capture task). We controlled for several personal and demographic variables known to influence pupil size, such as age and nicotine consumption. Our analyses revealed no relationship between resting-state pupil size (average or variability) and any of the measured constructs, neither before nor after controlling for confounding variables. Taken together, our results suggest that any relationship between resting-state pupil size and cognitive abilities is likely to be weak or non-existent.

Development of reasoning performance in Raven's matrices is grounded in the development of effective strategy use.

Performance in reasoning tasks such as Raven's matrices experiences a dramatic increase over cognitive development, but the mechanisms responsible for this increase are unknown. Many cognitive processes are involved in a matrix task and could potentially change with age; strategy use appears to be a good candidate, as it typically improves over development and has a large impact on reasoning performance in adults. The present study tested the role of effective strategy use in Raven's standard progressive matrices in groups of 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, 14-, 16-, and 18-year-olds (total N = 474). Strategy use was assessed with behavioral measures of gaze patterns in Raven's matrices. We also measured working memory capacity (WMC), a good predictor of strategy use in adults, using a battery of complex spans. The results showed that the effective strategy of constructive matching substantially increased with age, along with performance. Strategy use mediated over half the effect of age on reasoning performance. Older participants were also better at adapting strategy use to difficulty of the problems. Effective strategy use was beneficial to the same extent for participants of all ages. Age-related improvements in strategy use occurred in tandem with improvements in WMC, but did not appear to be primarily driven by them. Overall, our results indicate that strategy use is a critical underpinning of reasoning performance in children as well as in adults, and that theories of cognitive development of reasoning have to consider the central role of strategy use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

An item response theory approach to the measurement of working memory capacity.

Complex span tasks are perhaps the most widely used paradigm to measure working memory capacity (WMC). Researchers assume that all types of complex span tasks assess domain-general WM. However, most research supporting this claim comes from factor analysis approaches that do not examine task performance at the item level, thus not allowing comparison of the characteristics of verbal and spatial complex span tasks. Item response theory (IRT) can help determine the extent to which different complex span tasks assess domain-general WM. In the current study, spatial and verbal complex span tasks were examined using IRT. The results revealed differences between verbal and spatial tasks in terms of item difficulty and block difficulty, and showed that most subjects with below-average ability were able to answer most items correctly across all tasks. In line with previous research, the findings suggest that examining domain-general WM by using only one task might elicit skewed scores based on task domain. Further, visuospatial complex span tasks should be prioritized as a measure of WMC if resources are limited.

Strategy use moderates the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence: A combined approach

This study investigated whether the strength of the link between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence differs as people use different strategies to solve fluid intelligence problems. A sample of 214 university students completed three complex span tasks measuring working memory capacity and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) assessing fluid intelligence. Strategic behavior was measured by both the strategy questionnaire and the eye-tracking technique. Latent profile analysis yielded three groups of participants using constructive matching, response elimination, and a third strategy, respectively. Participants adopting constructive matching spent proportionally more time on the matrix area but less time on the response bank, and exhibited longer latency to first toggle and higher rate of toggling than those using response elimination and the other strategy, consistent with the results obtained from the questionnaire data. Furthermore, strategy use moderated the relationship between working memory capacity and APM performance. The link between working memory capacity and APM scores was significantly higher for participants using eliminative strategies including response elimination (r = 0.63) and the other strategy (r = 0.54) than that for those using constructive matching (r = 0.27). Our findings suggest that the extent to which working memory relates to performance on APM varies as a function of strategy use.

The Mindset of Intelligence Is Not a Contributor of Placebo Effects in Working Memory Training.

Whether working memory training is effective in enhancing fluid intelligence remains in dispute. Several researchers, who doubt the training benefits, consider that placebo effects may be the reason for positive training gains. One of the vital variables that may induce the placebo effect is the mindset of intelligence. In this article, we provide a test of whether the mindset of intelligence leads to placebo effects in working memory training. Participants were overtly recruited and allocated to the growth mindset group or the fixed mindset group by Theories of Intelligence Scale scores. A single, 1 h session working memory training is the cue to introduce the placebo effects. During pre/post-testing, all participants completed tasks measuring working memory capacity (near transfer) and fluid intelligence (far transfer). Our findings show no significant difference between the two groups in both tasks. Therefore, these results suggest that the placebo effect does not exist in this study, which means individuals' mindset of intelligence may not be a contributor to the placebo effect in 1 h working memory training. This research will further help to clarify the mechanism of the placebo effect in working memory training.

Is the n-back task a measure of unstructured working memory capacity? Towards understanding its connection to other working memory tasks

Working memory is fundamental to human cognitive functioning, and it is often measured with the n-back task. However, it is not clear whether the n-back task is a valid measure of working memory. Importantly, previous studies have found poor correlations with measures of complex span, whereas a recent study (Frost et al., 2019) showed that n-back performance was correlated with a transsaccadic memory task but dissociated from performance on the change detection task, a well-accepted measure of working memory capacity. To test whether capacity is involved in the n-back task we correlated a spatial version of the test with different versions of the change detection task. Experiment 1 introduced perceptual and cognitive disruptions to the change detection task. This impacted task performance, however, all versions of the change detection task remained highly correlated with one another whereas there was no significant correlation with the n-back task. Experiment 2 removed spatial and non-spatial context from the change detection task. This produced a correlation with n-back. Our results indicate that the n-back task is supported by faculties similar to those that support change detection, but that this commonality is hidden when contextual information is available to be exploited in a change detection task such that structured representations can form. We suggest that n-back might be a valid measure of working memory, and that the ability to exploit contextual information is an important faculty captured by some versions of the change detection task.

Explaining the high working memory capacity of gifted children: Contributions of processing skills and executive control

Intellectually gifted children tend to demonstrate especially high working memory capacity, an ability that holds a critical role in intellectual functioning. What could explain the differences in working memory performance between intellectually gifted and nongifted children? We investigated this issue by measuring working memory capacity with complex spans in a sample of 55 gifted and 55 nongifted children. Based on prior studies, we expected the higher working memory capacity of intellectually gifted children to be driven by more effective executive control, as measured using the Attention Network Test. The findings confirmed that intellectually gifted children had higher working memory capacity than typical children, as well as more effective executive attention. Surprisingly, however, working memory differences between groups were not mediated by differences in executive attention. Instead, it appears that gifted children resolve problems faster in the processing phase of the working memory task, which leaves them more time to refresh to-be-remembered items. This faster problem solving speed mediated their advantage in working memory capacity. Importantly, this effect was specific to speed on complex problems: low-level processing speed, as measured with the Attention Network Test, did not contribute to the higher working memory capacity of gifted children.

Examining the stress, depressive thoughts, and working memory capacities of the university students

The objective of the study is to measure the capacity of the working memory, and also to investigate its relationship to life stress and depressive thoughts. The study sample consisted of 50 college students studied on Science and Art major. A cognitive task was designed to measure the working memory capacity based on the determinants found in previous research. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in the level of life stress events (high/low) on the task of measuring the working memory capacity. The results also showed that there were no statistically significant differences neither between genders nor between majors on the task of measuring the working memory capacity. Furthermore, the results reported that there was no statistically significant effect of the interaction of the level of life stress (high/low) and gender (male/female) on the task of measuring working memory capacity. Finally, the results reported that there were significant differences in the level of depressive thoughts (high/low) on the task of measuring working memory. The current research concludes that neither the interaction of stressful life events, gender, and academic major, nor the interaction of depressive thoughts, gender, and academic major have an effect on working memory capacity.

The role of working memory capacity in interpreting performance

Abstract This study aims to examine the relationship between working memory (WM) capacity and the performance of student interpreters defined as the quality of their interpreting output. To measure WM capacity, we administered Korean and English reading span tasks, and an operation span task. The WM scores were analysed for correlation with simultaneous interpreting (SI) and consecutive interpreting (CI) scores. The results were mixed: (1) the CI score showed no correlation with any of the WM span tasks and (2) the SI score correlated with only one WM span task, the operation span task. Given that the participants received shorter training in SI than in CI, we can tentatively conclude that interpreting performance is influenced more by WM capacity when the interpreter performs a less familiar type of interpreting. Further research is needed to find out why the reading span tasks and the operation span task showed different relationships with SI.

The daily rhythms of working memory and their methodological constraints: a critical overview

ABSTRACT Working memory (WM) performance is not constant throughout the 24-hour cycle. Daily oscillations in WM performance are modulated by interactions between circadian and homeostatic factors. However, investigations that ascertained the circadian rhythm(s) of WM found contradictory results regarding the moments in which the lowest and highest peaks of WM performance occur across the light-dark cycle. This review analyses the findings and methodological approaches of past studies that assessed the circadian cycle(s) of WM and explores the main methodological constraints that may explain their mixed findings. Such differences may be explained by (1) the use of diverse experimental protocols; (2) the employment of different degrees of control of confounding exogenous variables; (3) the application of different types of WM paradigms; (4) the use of different conceptualizations and operationalizations to assess the daily rhythm(s) of WM. Some investigations that evaluated the daily pattern of WM performance considered this cognitive function as a single unit and used general/single measures of WM capacity to estimate the parameters of its circadian cycle, while others tried to disentangle the daily rhythms of the subcomponents of WM. Findings of structural and neurobehavioral studies suggest that the subcomponents of WM present independent circadian rhythms.

How Executive Processes Explain the Overlap between Working Memory Capacity and Fluid Intelligence: A Test of Process Overlap Theory.

Working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (Gf) are highly correlated, but what accounts for this relationship remains elusive. Process-overlap theory (POT) proposes that the positive manifold is mainly caused by the overlap of domain-general executive processes which are involved in a battery of mental tests. Thus, executive processes are proposed to explain the relationship between WMC and Gf. The current study aims to (1) achieve a relatively purified representation of the core executive processes including shifting and inhibition by a novel approach combining experimental manipulations and fixed-links modeling, and (2) to explore whether these executive processes account for the overlap between WMC and Gf. To these ends, we reanalyzed data of 215 university students who completed measures of WMC, Gf, and executive processes. Results showed that the model with a common factor, as well as shifting and inhibition factors, provided the best fit to the data of the executive function (EF) task. These components explained around 88% of the variance shared by WMC and Gf. However, it was the common EF factor, rather than inhibition and shifting, that played a major part in explaining the common variance. These results do not support POT as underlying the relationship between WMC and Gf.

Is baseline pupil size related to cognitive ability? Yes (under proper lighting conditions)

There has been some controversy as to whether baseline pupil size is related to individual differences in cognitive ability. Previously, we had shown that a larger baseline pupil size was associated with higher cognitive ability and that the correlation to fluid intelligence was larger than that to working memory capacity (Tsukahara, Harrison, & Engle, 2016). However, other researchers have not been able to replicate our findings – though they only measured working memory capacity and not fluid intelligence. Many of the studies showing no relationship had major methodological issues, namely small baseline pupil size values – down to the physiological minimum – that resulted in reduced variability on baseline pupil size. We conducted two large-scale studies to investigate how different lighting conditions affect baseline pupil size values and the correlation with cognitive abilities. We found that fluid intelligence, working memory capacity, and attention control did correlate with baseline pupil size except in the brightest lighting conditions. We showed that a reduced variability in baseline pupil size values is due to the monitor settings being too bright. Overall, our findings demonstrated that the baseline pupil size – working memory capacity relationship was not as strong or robust as that with fluid intelligence or attention control. Our findings have strong methodological implications for researchers investigating individual differences in task-free or task-evoked pupil size. We conclude that fluid intelligence does correlate with baseline pupil size and that this is related to the functional organization of the resting-state brain through the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system.

New insights in implicit sequence learning of adults with traumatic brain injury: As measured by an ocular serial reaction time (O-SRT) task.

Objective: We investigated the effect of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on implicit sequence learning (ISL) and its relation with demographic, clinical, and working memory (WM) capacity using an eye-tracked variant of the standard serial reaction time (RT; SRT) task. Besides RT, this ocular SRT (O-SRT) task enables generation of correct anticipations (CA) and stucks, reflecting other critical aspects of ISL. Method: ISL was tested in 26 individuals with TBI and 28 healthy controls using the O-SRT task. Mixed analyses of variance were conducted to analyze RT and CA in three phases: learning, interference, and recovery from interference. The average number of stucks was compared with an independent-samples t test. Finally, Pearson correlation analyses of ISL with demographic, clinical, and WM capacity measures were performed. Results: Based on RT, ISL was impaired in the TBI group. However, CA demonstrated improved learning, but with deficits in the interference and recovery from interference phases. Stucks were more frequent in the TBI group, which affected RT and CA measures. Neither demographic nor clinical factors were associated with ISL. Verbal, but not spatial, WM capacity was impaired in the TBI group, and spatial WM capacity positively correlated with ISL in controls only. Conclusion: We suggest that the high TBI group stuck rate can be attributed to lack of initiative and/or conservative response bias associated with TBI, and view it as a main cause leading to deficits in ISL. Unlike controls, the TBI group could not muster their relatively preserved spatial WM capacity to support their ISL performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional states affect the retention of biological motion in working memory.

Retaining biological motion (BM), or the movements of animate entities, in working memory (WM) is critical to human social life. Moreover, as functioning members of society, we always process BM in a specific emotional state. However, no WM study to date has explored the influence of emotional state on processing BM in WM. As a first step, the current study examined the influence of emotional state on WM capacity for BM. We first induced a specific (positive, negative, or neutral) emotional state and then asked the participants to complete a WM task measuring WM capacity for BM. In Experiment 1, we found that a negative emotional state impaired WM capacity for BM relative to neutral and positive emotional states, with no difference between the latter 2. Experiment 2, adopting μ and α suppression as electroencephalogram (EEG) indices, further confirmed that a negative emotional state reduced the number of BM stimuli retained in WM. Overall, the current study suggests that a negative emotional state has a considerably negative effect on WM capacity for BM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in working memory capacity and the regulation of arousal.

Previously it has been theorized that differential functioning of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system affects people's ability to regulate arousal, which has impacts on cognitive abilities. In the present study, we investigated three potential mechanisms by which the LC-NE system can fail to regulate arousal appropriately: hypoarousal, hyperarousal, and dysregulation of arousal. Each of these three could potentially account for why arousal affects cognition. To test the contributions of these three mechanisms, the present study examined individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and the regulation of arousal using pupillometry. Participants completed multiple complex span and visual arrays change-detection measures of WMC. An eye-tracker recorded pupil diameter as participants completed the visual arrays tasks. We found rather mixed evidence for the three mechanisms. Arousal dysregulation correlated with lower visual arrays performance and more self-reported attentional lapses. However, arousal regulation did not correlate with complex span performance. There was also some evidence for hypoarousal as an explanatory mechanism, as arousal correlated with attentional lapses. We discuss the implications of the results for theories regarding the role of arousal regulation in cognitive performance and individual differences in cognitive abilities.

Eye Tracking in Measuring the Relation of Anaphor Processing, Reading Fluency and Working Memory (WM) Capacity among University Students

This paper aimed at investigating (i) eye movement behaviour as indication of reading fluency during anaphor processing of young adults; (ii) and the relation between eye movement behaviours and Working Memory (WM) among young adults. This experiment used eye-tracking device to study the eye movements and Auditory Working Memory subtest to measure WM capacity. Tobii Eye-tracker was used to measure the movements of eyes for the participants. The results showed that young adults have similar eye movement behaviours, which were inverse typicality effect, as children. However, the score of their WC was similar to past studies whereby a larger WC capacity indicates better accessibility of resources and thus faster resolution of anaphors and antecedents. These findings were analyzed to determine the implications on the research development of eye-tracking towards students’ reading fluency during anaphor processing and its relation to working memory.

Is working memory capacity a causal factor in fluid intelligence?

It is well established that measures of reasoning ability and of working memory capacity (WMC) correlate positively. However, the question of what explains this relationship remains open. The purpose of this study was to investigate the capacity hypothesis, which ascribes causality to WMC. This hypothesis holds that people high in WMC are more successful in capacity-demanding cognitive tasks than people lower in WMC because they can temporarily maintain more information in the form of sub-goals, hypotheses, and partial solutions. Accordingly, this hypothesis predicts that the correlation between WMC and reasoning performance should increase as the capacity demands of the reasoning items increase. We tested this prediction using items from Raven's Progressive Matrices and two measures of WMC, complex span and the k estimate from the Visual Arrays task. Neither WMC measure showed the effect predicted by the capacity hypothesis. Furthermore, the results cannot be attributed to restriction of range in performance on the individual reasoning items. This finding adds to existing evidence calling into question the capacity hypothesis, and, more generally, the view that WMC has a causal influence on fluid intelligence.