Effects of adult age on structural and operational capacities in working memory.

Abstract

Eight experiments were conducted in which young adults and older adults were asked to report the latest value of 1 of several continuously changing numeric or spatial variables. Accuracy of reporting the current value of the target variable was lower with increases in the number of potentially relevant variables and with increases in the number of required processing operations. Young and older adults exhibited similar effects of the number of potentially relevant variables (hypothesized to be sensitive to the structural capacity of working memory) and of the number of required processing operations (hypothesized to be sensitive to the operational capacity of working memory), but older adults were generally less accurate than young adults.

Cited by (21)

1. Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user’s guide
   Conway, Andrew R. A., Kane, Michael J., Bunting, Michael F., Hambrick, D. Zach, Wilhelm, Oliver, Engle, Randall W. · 2005 · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
2. The Generality of Working Memory Capacity: A Latent-Variable Approach to Verbal and Visuospatial Memory Span and Reasoning.
   Kane, Michael J., Hambrick, David Z., Tuholski, Stephen W., Wilhelm, Oliver, Payne, Tabitha W., Engle, Randall W. · 2004 · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
3. Decomposing adult age differences in working memory
   Salthouse, Timothy A., Babcock, Renee L. · 1991 · Developmental Psychology
4. Cognition assessment using the NIH Toolbox
   Weintraub, Sandra, Dikmen, Sureyya S., Heaton, Robert K., Tulsky, David S., Zelazo, Philip D., Bauer, Patricia J., Carlozzi, Noelle E., Slotkin, Jerry, Blitz, David, Wallner-Allen, Kathleen et al. · 2013 · Neurology
5. Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention.
   Klaus Oberauer · 2002 · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition

See all 285