Age differences in working memory— The roles of storage and selective access

Abstract

Twenty-four young (23 years) and 24 old (71 years) adults performed arithmetic tasks with working memory loads ranging from 1 to 4. Age groups were equivalent in mean accuracy and speed of arithmetic operations under minimal working memory load, but old adults were slower than young with memory demands .1. Access to a new object in working memory as the basis of computation required additional time. This object-switching cost increased with increases in memory demand, but was unaffected by age, indicating that old adults have no deficit in selective access to working memory.

On the myth and the reality of the temporal validity degradation of general mental ability test scores

“…On the other hand, there is research showing that working memory capacity declines significantly with age (e.g., Oberauer et al, 2003). This literature would appear to be highly relevant to the question of absolute stability of g given that individual differences in working memory capacity predict performance on an array of cognitive tasks (Jensen, 1998).…”

“…That is, it is often thought that the efficiency of various cognitive processes (e.g., storage and retrieval of information) is largely dependent on the size or capacity of working memory (Cowan, 2005). For example, using a mental arithmetic task, Oberauer et al (2003) showed that older adults were just as fast in answering items as younger adults when the load on working memory was low, but found an age-related decrement as the load on memory increased. Specifically they found that there was no age-related effect on basic arithmetic operations or in the speed in accessing elements in memory.…”

“…Consistent with research in education, expertise and talent development (e.g., Gottfredson, 1997;Jensen, 1998;Lubinski & Benbow, 2000;Simonton, 1997), individuals with higher levels of GMA in early adulthood will develop an expert knowledge structure at a faster rate, greater depth and of greater sophistication than those with lower levels of GMA. Because there appears to be little agerelated decline in the ability to access and retrieve information from one's knowledge base (e.g., Oberauer, Wendland, & Kliegl, 2003) older workers would exhibit little or no deficits 5 Although our focus here is largely on the more technical, or taskoriented aspects of performance, it should be acknowledged that individuals can contribute to organizational effectiveness in ways other than proficiency in proscribed task-specific behaviors; the most important of these are thought to be discretionary behaviors that serve to shape and maintain the social and psychological environment in which task activities are performed. Over the years, researchers have referred to these discretionary behaviors in a number of different ways including organizational citizenship behavior, prosocial organizational behavior, and contextual performance (Borman & Motwidlo, 1993).…”

The distance effect in numerical memory-updating tasks

“…In this system, Oberauer (2002) has proposed the existence of a focus of attention in WM which maintains the representation which a person is aware of at a given moment and on which the next cognitive operation is performed. Along the same lines, Oberauer found greater switching costs when the number of elements in WM increased (see also Oberauer, 2003;Oberauer et al, 2003;Voigt & Hagendorf, 2002). This indicates the greater difficulty in selecting one item to be focused from different candidates when the number of candidates increases.…”

“…To investigate this process, tasks have been designed which involved simultaneously maintaining different elements in memory, some of which have to be replaced by new information. Many studies have examined the mechanisms involved in the selective access to the content of WM or in replacing outdated information (Garavan, 1998;Gehring, Bryck, Jonides, Albin, & Badre, 2003;Li, Bao, Chen, Zhang, Han, He, & Hu, 2006;Kessler & Meiran, 2006Oberauer, 2002Oberauer, , 2003Oberauer, Wendland, & Kliegl, 2003;Unsworth & Engle, 2008;Voigt & Hagendorf, 2002). However, little study has been given to the possible role played by the relationship between the information maintained in memory and the new information that replaces it.…”