Life-span development of visual working memory: When is feature binding difficult?

Abstract

We asked whether the ability to keep in working memory the binding between a visual object and its spatial location changes with development across the life span more than memory for item information. Paired arrays of colored squares were identical or differed in the color of one square and, in the latter case, the changed color was unique on that trial (item change) or was duplicated elsewhere in the array (color-location binding change). Children (8-10 and 11-12 years old) and older adults (65-85 years old) showed deficits relative to young adults. These were only partly simulated by dividing attention in young adults. The older adults had an additional deficiency, specifically in binding information, which was evident only when item-and binding-change trials were mixed together. In that situation, the older adults often overlooked the more subtle, bindingtype changes. Some working-memory processes related to binding undergo life-span development in an inverted U shape, whereas other, bias-and salience-related processes that influence the use of binding information seem to develop monotonically.Older adults have a memory deficiency compared to young adults, specifically in the retention of binding information. When items are presented in pairs, the items can be remembered normally but there is difficulty in remembering which ones were paired with which others. This appreciable decline occurs for the binding of focal items to contextual elements (Bayen, Phelps, & Spaniol, 2000;Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996 Chalfonte & Johnson (1996), suggested an associative deficit hypothesis, which focuses on the distinction between memory for single units and memory for associations among units. The present study examines the generality of the associative deficit hypothesis for children as well as the older adults, and for a task examining working memory rather than long-term memory. In this task, two arrays of colored squares must be compared, with the arrays sometimes identical and sometimes differing in the color of a single square. This task has been extensively researched in young adults (Luck & Vogel, 1997; Morey & Cowan, 2004, in press;Todd & Marois, 2004;Vogel & Machizawa, 2004;Vogel, Woodman, & Luck, 2001) and has been examined in infants (Ross-Sheehy, Oakes, & Luck, 2003) and children (Cowan et al., in press).In our version of the task, haphazardly-placed squares of different colors form a sample array that is soon replaced by a blank interval and then a test array identical to the sample array or differing in the color of a single square. A circle surrounding one square in the test array indicates which square changed color, if any square did, and the required response is a judgment as to whether a color change occurred. Inasmuch as colors are selected for the sample array

Evaluating the developmental trajectory of the episodic buffer component of working memory and its relation to word recognition in children

“…Developmental trajectories in feature binding performance have previously been observed across children and into young adulthood using a range of tasks measuring within-domain visual and spatial binding (e.g., Brockmole & Logie, 2013;Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, et al, 2006;Picard et al, 2012), verbal binding within sentences (Alloway et al, 2004;Kapikian & Briscoe, 2012), and across-domain binding between verbal and spatial information Darling et al, 2014). The present study extends this to a different task where visual and auditory-verbal materials were to be bound and held in working memory over short intervals.…”

“…In a large-scale online study of visual memory, Brockmole and Logie (2013) found that binding between colour and shape showed a developmental trajectory from 8 years old and into adolescence, with younger children recalling a higher rate of unbound features. Other studies have administered tasks tapping binding between features and locations, and generally found developmental improvements from younger to older children, and into adulthood (e.g., Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, & Saults, 2006;Lorsbach & Reimer, 2005;Picard et al, 2012). In the purely verbal domain, Alloway, Gathercole, Willis, and Adams (2004) examined binding using sentence recall alongside a range of other measures, and found evidence for developmental improvements from 4 years of age.…”

Differential age-related effects on conjunctive and relational visual short-term memory binding

“…For instance, older adults showed poor short-term memory for item-spatial location relational binding, despite intact memory for individual features (items or locations alone) (Borg, Leroy, Favre, Laurent, & Thomas-Anterion, 2011;Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, & Saults, 2006;Fandakova, Sander, Werkle-Bergner, & Shing, 2014;Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, Mather, & D'Esposito, 2000;Olson et al, 2004; but see Read, Rogers, & Wilson, 2016;Rhodes, Parra, Cowan, & Logie, 2017). Age-related decrease of short-term memory for face-scene pairings was also reported 4 2012).…”

Differences in binding and monitoring mechanisms contribute to lifespan age differences in false memory.

“…The associative component depends on medial temporal functioning and refers to mechanisms that bind together different aspects of an event into a cohesive representation during the encoding, storage and retrieval of episodic memories. It is relatively mature by middle childhood (around age 6), as indicated by behavioral and neuroimaging evidence (Gogtay et al, 2004;Ofen et al, 2007;Sowell et al, 2003; but see Ghetti, DeMaster, et al, 2010;Gogtay et al, 2006), and undergoes senescent decline during adulthood and old age (Brehmer, Li, Muller, von Oertzen, & Lindenberger, 2007;Cowan, Naveh-Benjamin, Kilb, & Saults, 2006;Raz, Ghisletta, Rodrigue, Kennedy, & Lindenberger, 2010;Raz et al, 2005;Sander, Werkle-Bergner, & Lindenberger, 2011). The strategic component depends on prefrontal functioning and refers to control and organizational processes during encoding, as well as strategic search, monitoring and evaluation during retrieval.…”