Research has shown that language ability can vary enormously depending on variables such as musical ability, musical training, and second and/or foreign language experience. In this study, we simulated initial foreign language learning conditions in which learners must recognize and match unfamiliar language input. We recruited 500 participants with different levels of foreign language experience, different levels of musical training and different socio-economic backgrounds. Their auditory phonological pattern recognition ability, short-term memory (STM) capacity, musical ability, musical self-estimation, educational status, and socio-economic status (SES) were assessed. Both overall and group-specific analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of these variables. For the group-specific analysis, participants were assigned to four groups based on the presence or absence of musical training and extensive foreign language experience. For the overall analysis, regression models were applied to the entire sample to examine the combined effects of all variables. Group-specific analyses revealed that both musical training and extensive foreign language experience contributed to individual differences in the ability to recognize phonological patterns in unintelligible auditory stimuli. A key finding was that musical training appeared to have a stronger influence on auditory phonological pattern recognition than extensive foreign language experience, particularly in the early stages of language learning. This suggests that musical training may exert a greater impact on initial phonetic acquisition processes than extensive foreign language proficiency, especially when the language stimuli are relatively poor in linguistic content. The overall analysis revealed that musical variables, short-term memory capacity, socioeconomic status, and educational status all contributed to individual differences in auditory phonological pattern recognition. Notably, the most significant finding of the overall analysis was the association between SES and auditory phonological pattern recognition in unfamiliar speech—a result that challenges the notion of aptitude measures as stable and environment-independent and highlights the potential influence of environmental factors on this capacity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate participants’ long- and short-term memory performance under different light environments and time situations. Forty-two participants were recruited. The participants’ short- and long-term memory capacities were evaluated under the three lighting conditions (300 lx, 600 lx and 800 lx) and at two times (morning and afternoon). The results showed that different illuminance levels significantly affected participants’ short- and long-term memory capacities. In the 2-back test, participants performed better in the 800 lx environment. For the concept map test, results reported that better memory capacity was found in the 600 lx environment. Regarding the time factor, the time effect significantly affected long-term memory. Participants performed significantly better in the morning than in the afternoon across all tasks. The final results were obtained using the response surface method. The 800 lx illumination combination in the morning was optimal for both short-term and long-term memory performance. In conclusion, the main finding is that participants’ long-term and short-term memory capacity varied depending on the lighting conditions, with illuminance significantly affecting both short-term and long-term memory. The results might have implications for future lighting research as well as lighting design for memory capacity work needs.

Reward processing is a vital function for health and survival and is impaired in various psychiatric and neurological disorders. Using a monetary gambling task, the current study aims to elucidate neural substrates in the reward network underlying the evaluation of win versus loss outcomes and their association with behavioral characteristics, such as impulsivity and task performance, and neuropsychological functioning. Functional MRI was recorded in thirty healthy, male community volunteers (mean age = 27.4 years) while they performed a monetary gambling task in which they bet with either 10 or 50 tokens and received feedback on whether they won or lost the bet amount. Results showed that a set of key brain structures in the reward network, including the putamen, caudate nucleus, superior and inferior parietal lobule, angular gyrus, and Rolandic operculum, had greater blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals during win relative to loss trials, and the BOLD signals in most of these regions were highly correlated with one another. Furthermore, exploratory bivariate analyses between these reward-related regions and behavioral and neuropsychological domains showed significant correlations with moderate effect sizes, including (i) negative correlations between non-planning impulsivity and activations in the putamen and caudate regions, (ii) positive correlations between risky bets and right putamen activation, (iii) negative correlations between safer bets and right putamen activation, (iv) a negative correlation between short-term memory capacity and right putamen activity, and (v) a negative correlation between poor planning skills and left inferior occipital cortex activation. These findings contribute to our understanding of the neural underpinnings of monetary reward processing and their relationships to aspects of behavior and cognitive function. Future studies may confirm these findings with larger samples of healthy controls and extend these findings by investigating various clinical groups with impaired reward processing.

We examined whether short-term memory (STM) capacity, type of practice, metacognitive judgments and task characteristics influence the likelihood of cognitive offloading. We used a Letter-Naming task, where people hear sets of letters they subsequently must report. We manipulated set size (i.e., 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 letters) and whether people could write down the letters as they heard them prior to reporting them. We also manipulated the difficulty of the practice trials by varying their set sizes. Consistent with previous studies, we found participants offloaded more as set size increased and that offloading increased accuracy, especially for the higher set sizes. Difficult practice also increased offloading, particularly for smaller set sizes, with many participants developing a perseveration strategy in favor of offloading. Moreover, STM capacity was negatively correlated with frequency of offloading in the intermediate but not in the smallest or largest set sizes. Metacognitive judgments and self-ratings of effort and motivation revealed that although motivation to correctly report the letters predicted overall frequency of offloading, judgments of effort involved in offloading and confidence in task performance did not. Finally, removing the ability to offload also led to lower estimates of short-term memory ability and decreased motivation to correctly report letters.

This study aimed to investigate different short-term memory capacities (STMC) on resting brain of healthy individuals particularly the neuropsychology and connectivity behaviors. The outcomes may serve as a baseline for clinical diagnosis of memory decline due to aging and mental disorders. It was hypothesized that resting brain of low and typical STMC individuals behaves differently. Thirty-nine healthy young male adults were recruited from local universities. They were categorized as typical or low STMC based on their scores in the Malay Version of the Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (MVAVLT). A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was conducted and data were analyzed using statistical parametric mapping (SPM) and dynamic causal modeling (DCM). Nine neuropsychological assessments were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in typical STMC participants compared with low STMC participants. Four activation clusters survived the contrast “Low > Typical” uncorrected at set and cluster levels threshold (p FWE < 0.05). A causal model containing these clusters as nodes found that there is no preference on negative or positive connectivity among typical and low STMC groups. Nevertheless, implementing a reduced connection scheme revealed more significant connections for the low STMC group. To conclude, the low STMC participants scored lower in all neuropsychological assessments, but a higher activation profile with more areas being connected effectively as compared with the typical STMC group. The results suggest a higher resting neural activity and communication among certain brain areas in low STMC individuals that the brain could have executed as a compensation strategy.

This paper presents a control framework for the image tracking of two-wheeled self-balancing carts, with the objective of achieving precise tracking control. Exploiting the remarkable memory capacity of the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network for sequence signals, the framework conducts image memory judgment and memorization, aiming to enhance control accuracy. After the training phase, comprehensive simulations and real-world experiments are carried out based on the established model to verify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed control strategy. The system utilizes the TSL1401 linear array CCD lens to detect black tapes on the ground and identify and memorize surrounding images. Through the establishment of a continuous set of training sample points, the LSTM network is trained using Python and TensorFlow. This training process optimizes the network’s weights and generates weight files, which can be readily converted into machine code for physical implementation. Initially, the effectiveness of the control law is verified through simulating the symmetrical steering control of the two-wheeled cart. The simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed design method and its superior performance. Finally, a physical two-wheeled self-balancing cart is developed to further validate the feasibility of the framework. Experimental results confirm that this method is highly effective, demonstrating robust image tracking capabilities and optimal tracking performance.

This study aimed to investigate to what extent working memory capacity (WMC) and emotional intelligence (EI) contribute to second language (L2) writing as assessed through measures of syntactic and lexical complexity and linguistic accuracy. Seventy-seven adult learners of Spanish took part in the study and performed two writing tasks, one about an emotional topic and the other one about a non-emotional topic. They also completed a self-reported measure of EI, the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, and three memory tasks, the Math Span Test, the Corsi Block-Tapping Task, and the Stroop Task. The results showed a negative correlation between emotional repair and visuospatial short-term memory capacity. Attention to emotions positively contributed to linguistic accuracy in both tasks, whereas linguistic distance between the first language of the participants and their L2 appeared to play a role in linguistic accuracy but only in the emotional task. Moreover, in the emotional task, WMC and emotional repair had a cumulative but opposing contribution — positive and negative, respectively — to the subordination density. Also, the hypothesis that the writing topic would have some influence on the lexico-morphosyntactic aspects of L2 writing was partly confirmed.

Short-term memory poses a significant challenge, involving complex processes of image perception, memory formation, and execution. However, the mechanisms underlying the formation, storage, and execution of short-term memory remain poorly understood. In this study, 41 healthy college students participated in a memory challenge test designed to investigate these processes. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was employed to measure dynamic changes in hemoglobin concentrations in specific cortical regions, while facial expressions and vital signs were recorded in real-time during the tests. The results revealed heightened activity in the inferior prefrontal gyrus, visual association cortex, pre-motor cortex, and supplementary motor cortex. Functional connectivity between these regions was significantly enhanced during the tasks, and inter-group differences decreased over time. Participants with superior short-term memory exhibited lower levels of negative emotional expressions and higher heart rates compared to those with weaker memory performance. These findings suggest that cortical interconnectivity and adequate cerebral blood oxygenation play critical roles in enhancing short-term memory capacity. This has important implications for education, as it highlights strategies for cultivating attention, training memory skills, and improving memory integration abilities.

Echo state networks (ESNs) are time series processing models working under the echo state property (ESP) principle. The ESP is a notion of stability that imposes an asymptotic fading of the memory of the input. On the other hand, the resulting inherent architectural bias of ESNs may lead to an excessive loss of information, which in turn harms the performance in certain tasks with long short-term memory requirements. To bring together the fading memory property and the ability to retain as much memory as possible, in this article, we introduce a new ESN architecture called the Edge of Stability ESN (). The introduced model is based on defining the reservoir layer as a convex combination of a nonlinear reservoir (as in the standard ESN), and a linear reservoir that implements an orthogonal transformation. In virtue of a thorough mathematical analysis, we prove that the whole eigenspectrum of the Jacobian of the map can be contained in an annular neighborhood of a complex circle of controllable radius. This property is exploited to tune the 's dynamics close to the edge-of-chaos regime by design. Remarkably, our experimental analysis shows that model can reach the theoretical maximum short-term memory capacity (MC). At the same time, in comparison to conventional reservoir approaches, is shown to offer an excellent trade-off between memory and nonlinearity, as well as a significant improvement of performance in autoregressive nonlinear modeling and real-world time series modeling.

Background music has been shown in various studies to have many potential benefits for productivity and learning. In this paper, two studies were conducted to investigate the influence of different genres of background music on reading comprehension. One study focused on the effects of instrumental music, while the other study focused on the effects of vocal music and presence of neurodivergent conditions. The genres Pop and Rock were hypothesized to improve reading comprehension compared to silence, while Rap, Western Classical, Indian Classical, and Jazz were expected to impair reading comprehension. In both studies, background music, regardless of genre, had no significant effects on participants’ reading comprehension. There were no significant differences in reading comprehension scores when participants were grouped by age, musical experience, or vocal versus instrumental music. There were significant differences in reading scores without background music between the neurodivergent and neurotypical groups. These differences disappeared after adding background music, indicating that background music impacted neurodivergent and neurotypical participants’ reading abilities differently. Participants also completed a digit span forward task without background music to assess short-term memory capacity. Analysis of the reading and memory scores indicates that short-term memory is weakly linked to reading comprehension performance. Larger-scale studies are recommended to further validate these relationships between music and reading comprehension.

The current study illustrated a mediation model of different aspects of family environmental factors in predicting short-term memory and social understanding in Chinese children. The study investigated how children’s short-term memory and social understanding were predicted by family environment factors, including socioeconomic status, home crowdedness, household chaos, and the number of children’s books at home (books) among 525 children in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Data on social understanding, socioeconomic status, crowdedness, household chaos, and books were collected by parent questionnaires. Both verbal and visual short-term memory were measured individually. The results showed that the books mediated the role of crowdedness to both verbal and visual short-term memory in Mainland China, whereas in Hong Kong, crowdedness directly predicted two short-term memory with socioeconomic status controlled. Moreover, the role of crowdedness to social understanding is fully mediated by household chaos in Hong Kong and by both household chaos and books in Mainland China. Our study highlighted that manipulating soft aspects of family environmental factors (maintaining an organized, less chaotic family environment, putting more books at home) could enhance children’s fundamental short-term memory capacity and social functioning.

BackgroundParkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterised by motor symptoms. However, approximately half of patients with PD exhibit signs of dementia within a decade of diagnosis. While deficits...

The goal of our study was to investigate the effect of 2 consecutive badminton matches among elite badminton players on visuomotor integration, dynamic balance ability, inhibitory control, short-term memory capacity, and changes in cardiovascular fitness. Badminton is the fastest racket sport regarding the speed of the shuttle leaving the racket. The play with open move skills is characterized by series of short range and high intensity workload phases. The effectiveness is affected by the execution of the specific movement techniques within a certain time period and the optimal function of decision-making techniques. The experiment included a tournament with 2 simulated matches among elite, adult, male badminton players. The quality of visuomotor integrity and dynamic balance task were measured with Blazepod modified adapted Y-Balance Test induced reactive balance test, pre and post matches. Stroop test was used to evaluate the inhibition capability, and Digit Span Test was applied to measure the cognitive short-term capacity. Remarkable changes could not be detected in the visuomotor reaction in each time points. Gradual increase was observed in balance errors due to the dominant leg (right) support. Digit Span Test decreased between pre and post match measurements, however, significant changes (P < .01) could be detected after the restitution period between pre and post match. No alteration could be seen with Stroop test in each time points, nevertheless, notable increase in false results were observed at the 4th measurements points. Heart rate did not remarkably differ. In summary, the intensive, consecutive strength had a negative effect on peripheral system, and therefore on dynamic balance control. Cognitive ability indicated gradual deterioration, but showed optimal regeneration between loads.

ABSTRACT Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders in children. According to developmental literature findings, there is a link between executive function (EF) and ADHD. Although EF deficits vary across ADHD presentations in children, working memory capacity is commonly associated with attention impairments. Notably, deficits in working memory capacity are also observed in frequent mind wandering reports for typically developing children. Mind wandering is shifting attention away from a current task to an unrelated thought. To explore the relationship between EF and mind wandering in children with ADHD (n = 47) and further compare our current sample to a typically developing (control) group from a previous study (n = 47), all participants completed three EF-related tasks. They concurrently reported if they were on task or mind wandering. Our results indicate better short-term memory capacity predicted lower mind wandering frequency in children who reported high levels of ADHD symptoms. Similar trends were observed for working memory capacity and ADHD symptomatology. Children with ADHD also reported more overall and unintentional mind wandering on questionnaires compared to children without ADHD. However, the relationship between EF and mind wandering did not differ between these groups. The current study suggests memory-related cognitive abilities may inform our understanding and management of mind wandering in children, driving the development of interventions targeting attention regulation.

Considering the importance of physical activity on the development of cognitive functions in children, the aim of this study was to assess the effects of a ten-week training program using the Interactive Floor device (© Funtronic), i.e., a kinesthetic educational game, and aerobic activity training on executive functions in 9-year-old children. Given current knowledge of the advantages of gamification and on-task switching, stronger improvement was expected for the Interactive Floor device than aerobic exercise activities. Sixty-four children (29 boys/35 girls) were randomly assigned to the Interactive Floor (n = 22), Aerobic Training (n = 22), or Control groups (n = 20). The participants had their cognitive abilities assessed twice (pre- and post-intervention) using computer tests from the Vienna Test System (VTS) and subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children® Fifth Edition (WISC®-V). From VTS, the Stroop Test was used to measure inhibition and attentional control, while the Corsi Block test assessed visuospatial short-term working memory. To assess auditory working memory, the Digit Span subtest from the WISC®-V was applied. Additionally, fluid intelligence was estimated using Raven's Progressive Matrices. Repeated-measures mixed ANOVA and post hoc tests with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons showed that all intervention program groups improved in terms of intelligence and non-verbal abstract reasoning. The second significant finding in this study was that especially children from the Interactive Floor group developed their executive functions, i.e., inhibition and attentional control as well as their spatial short-term memory capacity. The results suggest that a combination of both physical exercise and cognitive games in the Interactive Floor group resulted in greater improvement in cognitive abilities in children than aerobic exercise or physical education lessons. It seems that a multidisciplinary approach combining physical and cognitive stimulation effectively promotes child development. Future programs aiming to improve cognitive skills in children should consider incorporating interactive and engaging activities that stimulate both the body and the mind.

Media multitasking reading habits are negatively associated to text comprehension and metacomprehension

The transient activity of the brain can be characterized by stable heteroclinic channels (SHCs) in the phase space of dynamical models, and the saddle points can represent the metastable states of brain activity. Inspired by this view, based on the hippocampal CA3-CA1 synaptic network model of memory we constructed earlier, we encode memory engrams as trajectories within the SHC in phase space. Short-term memory is transformed into long-term memory and then is encoded as trajectories within the SHC. The saddle points indicate the information blocks that have been segmented during the process of short-term memory. A stable heteroclinic network (SHN) is composed of multiple SHCs, whose trajectories express the memory engrams formed after the conversion of multiple short-term memories into long-term memories. From the existence conditions of SHC and SHN, the asymmetric regulation of neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine on the inhibition strength of adjacent postsynaptic neurons determines the capacity of short-term memory and participates in the encoding of long-term memory. Numerical results reveal the hysteresis effect of saddle points on the trajectories that reflect the limited capacity of short-term memory. All saddle points in the SHNs enable long-term memory to possess an extremely large capacity. Moreover, while noise in the hippocampal circuit can lead to the loss or confusion of memory information, it can also facilitate the encoding of long-term memories. The model and its theoretical analysis allow us to explain memory from the perspective of dynamics and have guiding significance for understanding the encoding and storage process of memory.

Reservoir computing is a learning model that enables low-cost and fast learning compared to conventional deep learning. It enables physical implementation by replacing the reservoir part with a physical device that possesses nonlinearity, short-term memory, and high dimensionality. In particular, it was theoretically predicted that spin wave interference can perform highly efficient reservoir computing in micromagnetic simulations,[1] and it was experimentally verified by the present authors.[2] Whereas the computational performance was suggested to vary significantly depending on the interval of input voltage pulses used for spin wave excitation and the applied magnetic field intensity, the details were unclear to date. Therefore, we expanded the measurement range to investigate detailed mechanism of the system and to explore untouched high performance in the study.We use a device fabricated on the surface of a single crystal, as shown in Fig. (a), then we performed one of the most important prediction benchmark tasks, the Nonlinear Autoregressive Moving Average (NARMA) model. Since it has been found that utilizing the nonlinear interference of spin waves through multi-detection demonstrates high performance, in this study, we utilized both Detection A and Detection B. We evaluated the prediction error of NARMA10, which requires short-term memory up to 10 steps, by varying the applied magnetic field and the interval of input voltage pulses under measurement conditions. As shown in Fig. (b), the comparison between the target waveform and the output waveform during training and testing under the conditions of a magnetic field of 182 mT and a pulse interval of 23.6 ns shows a good match, at that time, the error was 0.183 during the testing phase. Next, we examined the detailed condition dependence in NARMA10. As indicated in Fig. (c), high performance is obtained in the region where the pulse interval is between 20 and 30 ns, while the performance was low in the region below 19.3 ns, particularly in the strong magnetic field range from 188 mT to 200 mT. We will discuss the condition dependence with the other NARMA models like NARMA2. Additionally, we will discuss in detail the dependence on input pulse intervals, along with evaluations of short-term memory capacity and nonlinearity. This work was in part supported by Innovative Science and Technology Initiative for Security Grant Number JPJ004596, ATLA, Japan and JST PRESTO (JPMJPR23H4).【Reference】[1] Nakane et al., IEEE Access 6, 4462 (2018).[2] Namiki et al., Adv. Intell. Syst. 5, 2300228 (2023). Figure 1

Predicting the tide: A deep-learning approach for understanding the whitemouth croaker prices in Northeast Brazil

This study begins with a brief analysis of the impact of six barriers (vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, phonetic comprehension ability, cultural background knowledge, and short-term memory capacity) on the paragraph dictation, component of the Test for English Majors Band 4 (TEM4). The study proposes corresponding strategies to enhance dictation skills, aiming to assist teachers and students in adopting effective training methods, and to boost learning interest and confidence.