Using Brinley plots, this meta-analysis provides a quantitative examination of age differences in eight verbal span tasks. The main conclusions are these: (a) there are age differences in all verbal span tasks; (b) the data support the conclusion that working memory span is more age sensitive than short-term memory span; and (c) there is a linear relationship between span of younger adults and span of older adults. A linear model indicates the presence of three distinct functions, in increasing order of size of age effects: simple storage span; backward digit span; and working memory span.

Objectives: To provide a systematic review of age-related differences in n-back performance. Method: Meta-analytic data aggregation. Results: Access for items stored within the focus of attention (0-back and 1-back) was very fast and quasi-perfect; when items are held outside the focus (n > 1), an additional cost was accrued in both accuracy and response time. Age-related differences in accuracy conformed to this bifurcation. Longer lists led to larger costs when going from 1-back to 2-back in older adults. For 1-back accuracy, studies that used visual (as opposed to verbal) stimuli, were experimenter-paced, and used shorter list lengths led to larger age-related differences; for 2-back accuracy, a larger difference in chronological age, visual stimuli, and a higher target proportion led to larger age-related differences. For 1-back response times, age-related differences were larger for studies that had a larger chronological age difference, used experimenter pacing, did not contain lures, and used shorter list lengths; for 2-back response times, age-related differences were larger for studies with larger chronological age differences, visual presentation, experimenter pacing, and a higher target proportion. Discussion: The results suggest a specific age-related deficit associated with focus switching within working memory. Evidence for specific executive-control-related explanations, in contrast, is mixed.

We explored age differences in transformation, supervision, and coordination processes in verbal and visuospatial repetition-detection tasks. Older adults processed information more slowly and less accurately than did younger adults, especially in the visuospatial task. However, there were no process-specific age-related differences in the visuospatial domain. In the verbal domain, task conditions requiring supervision and coordination showed larger age effects than the baseline or transformation conditions. Taken together, the findings provide support for a process- and domain-specific account of age-related differences in cognitive control, which may be tied to an age-related deficit in the maintenance of two separate sets of representations.

In three experiments, we investigated the hypothesis that age-related differences in working memory might be due to the inability to bind content with context. Participants were required to find a repeating stimulus within a single series (no context memory required) or within multiple series (necessitating memory for context). Response time and accuracy were examined in two task domains: verbal and visuospatial. Binding content with context led to longer processing time and poorer accuracy in both age groups, even when working memory load was held constant. Although older adults were overall slower and less accurate than younger adults, the need for context memory did not differentially affect their performance. It is therefore unlikely that age differences in working memory are due to specific age-related problems with content-with-context binding.

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