Alpha span: A measure of working memory.

Craik, Fergus I. M.; Bialystok, Ellen; Gillingham, Susan; Stuss, Donald T.

doi:10.1037/cep0000143

Cited by 19 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Alpha span. Participants were presented with a short series of common concrete one-syllable nouns at a 1-s rate and asked to repeat them back in correct alphabetical order (Craik et al, 2018). Two trials were given at each list length, starting at a list length of two, and participants progressed to the next length if they were correct on at least one of the two trials.…”

Section: Materials and Procedurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We also included the Star Counting task (Das-Smaal, de Jong, & Koopmans, 1993), which involves keeping track of ongoing counting operations and set shifting in the course of these operations. In Study 1 we included the Alpha Span test (Craik, 1986; Craik, Bialystok, Gillingham, & Stuss, 2018) in which participants must mentally rearrange short lists of words into correct alphabetic order. Finally, Study 1 included the Consonant Updating task (Morris & Jones, 1990), used by Friedman et al (2008) and Miyake et al (2000) under the title Letter Memory; this task gives a measure of the updating aspects of EF.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Individual differences in executive functions and retrieval efficacy in older adults.

Craik

Eftekhari

Bialystok

et al. 2018

Psychology and Aging

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Two prominent aspects of memory problems in older adults are a difficulty in retrieving recent episodic events and an often transient inability to retrieve names and other well-known facts from semantic memory. The question addressed in the present studies was whether these age-related difficulties reflect a common cause—a retrieval problem related to inefficient executive functions (EF). In the first study, 50 older adults were given 4 tests of EF; a derived composite measure correlated strongly with a measure of retrieval efficacy in free recall, less strongly with paired-associate recall, and nonsignificantly with retrieval of general knowledge. A second study used somewhat different measures of EF and also different measures of retrieval from semantic memory, and this study did find significant relations between EF, episodic memory, and knowledge retrieval. Changes in the specific tests representing both EF and memory retrieval changed the relations between them, suggesting that no one task is a pure measure of the theoretical constructs of either EF or episodic and semantic memory. Taken together, the 2 studies showed that individual differences in EF in older adults are correlated with retrieval efficacy in both episodic and semantic memory but also that these relations depend on the specific measures chosen to represent both EF and memory retrieval.

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Section: Materials and Procedurementioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Individual differences in executive functions and retrieval efficacy in older adults.

Craik

Eftekhari

Bialystok

et al. 2018

Psychology and Aging

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“…Other Tasks. Participants also completed a Conversion Task, which required converting fractions into decimals or vice versa, and two executive function tasks: Alpha Span (a measure of working memory; Craik et al, 2018), and Plus-Minus (a measure of shifting; Jersild, 1927). Because these tasks did not relate to our main predictions, the tasks and results from them are presented in the online supplemental materials.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Affordances of fractions and decimals for arithmetic.

Liu¹,

Braithwaite²

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Rational numbers are represented by multiple notations: fractions, decimals, and percentages. Whereas previous studies have investigated affordances of these notations for representing different types of information (DeWolf et al., 2015; Tian et al., 2020), the present study investigated their affordances for solving different types of arithmetic problems. We hypothesized that decimals afford addition better than fractions do and that fractions afford multiplication better than decimals do. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments with university students (Ns = 77 and 80). When solving fraction and decimal arithmetic problems, participants converted addition problems from fraction to decimal form more than vice versa, and converted multiplication problems from decimal to fraction form more than vice versa, thus revealing preferences favoring decimals for addition and fractions for multiplication. Accuracies paralleled these revealed preferences: Addition accuracy was higher with decimals than fractions, whereas multiplication accuracy was higher with fractions than decimals. Variations in notation preferences as a function of the types of operands involved (e.g., equal vs. unequal denominator fractions) were more consistent with an explanation based on adaptive strategy choice (Siegler, 1996) than with one based on semantic interpretations associated with each notation.

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“…To assess phonemic and semantic fluency, the F-A-S and Animal Fluency Tests ( Spreen and Strauss, 1998 ) were administered, while the short form of the Boston Naming Test (BNT-SF; Kaplan et al, 1983 ) was used as a naming measure. Executive functioning measures included the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST, Grant and Berg, 1948 ), Alpha Span Test ( Craik et al, 2018 ), the D-KEFS TMT, Number-Letter Switching Subtest ( Delis et al, 2001 ), and D-KEFS CWIT Inhibition subtest ( Delis et al, 2001 ). YAs completed only the SILS-II, WAIS-MR, and the Incidental Learning Paired Recall and Free Recall subtests of the WAIS-III DS.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Aging and Time of Day on Inhibitory Control: An Event-Related Potential Study

Rabi

Chow

Paracha

et al. 2022

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Time of day (TOD) influences on executive functions have been widely reported, with greater efficiency demonstrated at optimal relative to non-optimal TOD according to one’s chronotype (i.e., synchrony effect). Older adults (OAs) show declines in inhibitory control and are more sensitive to the effects of circadian variation on executive functioning. To date, no studies have investigated the effects of TOD and aging on executive functioning using electrophysiological measures. The present study investigated the effects of aging and TOD on the neural correlates of inhibitory processing (N2 and P3) using event-related potentials (ERPs). Go-NoGo and Flanker tasks were administered to 52 OAs of morning chronotype and 51 younger adults (YAs) of afternoon-to-evening chronotype who were randomly assigned to morning or afternoon test sessions, with the optimal TOD for OAs in the morning and for YAs in the afternoon/evening. While behavioral results demonstrated no TOD effects, ERPs indicated synchrony effects. Both YAs and OAs showed greater modulation of Go-NoGo N2 and greater P3 amplitude during the non-optimal than optimal TOD, consistent with the synchrony effect. For the Flanker task, age differences in P3 amplitude were only apparent during the non-optimal TOD. These results suggest that processes associated with inhibitory control are differentially affected by TOD and aging, with age-related reductions in inhibitory efficiency during off-peak test times on measures of interference control. These findings highlight the sensitivity of ERPs to detect TOD effects in the absence of behavioral differences, confirm more pronounced TOD effects in OAs relative to YAs on ERP measures of interference control, and reinforce the need to assess and control for circadian typology in research studies.

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Alpha span: A measure of working memory.

Cited by 19 publications

References 40 publications

Individual differences in executive functions and retrieval efficacy in older adults.

Individual differences in executive functions and retrieval efficacy in older adults.

Affordances of fractions and decimals for arithmetic.

The Effects of Aging and Time of Day on Inhibitory Control: An Event-Related Potential Study

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