Remember some or remember all? Ageing and strategy effects in visual working memory

Atkinson, Amy L.; Baddeley, Alan; Allen, Richard J.

doi:10.1080/17470218.2017.1341537

Cited by 33 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(96 reference statements)

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“…This is in line with recent findings (e.g. Atkinson, Baddeley, & Allen, 2018;Hu, Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2016), suggesting that participants can strategically prioritise a subset of items in order to support performance. In conclusion, both Experiment 1 and 2 led to the evidence that the ability to form and temporarily store Crossmodally bound representations does not decline with ageing, and that age does not have any differential effect on Crossmodal relative to Unimodal WMB.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Unimodal and crossmodal working memory binding is not differentially affected by age or Alzheimer’s disease.

et al. 2020

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Working Memory Binding (WMB) entails the integration of multiple sources of information to form and temporarily store unique representations. Information can be processed through either one (i.e., Unimodal WMB) or separate sensory modalities (i.e., Crossmodal WMB).Objective: In this study, we investigated whether Crossmodal WMB is differentially affected by normal or pathological ageing compared to Unimodal WMB. Methods: Experiment 1: 26 older and 26 younger adults recalled the target feature matching the test probe to complete a previously displayed colour-shape binding (visually presented in the Unimodal condition; auditorily and visually presented in the Crossmodal condition). Experiment 2: 35 older and 35 younger adults undertook the same paradigm while carrying out articulatory suppression to limit verbal recoding. Experiment 3: 24 Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients and two groups of 24 healthy matched controls (tested respectively with the same and an increased memory load compared to the patients) were recruited to perform a similar task. Results: Results show no age-related additional cost in Crossmodal WMB in respect to Unimodal WMB. AD patients had poor attainment in both WMB tasks regardless of specific binding condition. Conclusion: These findings provide evidence identifying WMB per se to be impaired in AD, regardless of the type of to-be-bound material. This supports the view that WMB is a suitable cognitive marker for AD.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Unimodal and crossmodal working memory binding is not differentially affected by age or Alzheimer’s disease.

et al. 2020

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“…This approach would also be amenable to assessing the impact of strategy instructions, and how this might vary with aging (e.g. Atkinson, Baddeley, & Allen, 2017), and would be particularly interesting given the importance of task practice reported presently.…”

Section: Strategic Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multimodal coding and strategic approach in young and older adults’ visual working memory performance

Nicholls

English

2019

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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Visual working memory (WM) was investigated in young (18-35 yrs) and older (63-88 yrs) adults by assessing use of visual and verbal processing, and strategic approach. Experiment 1 comprised a visual interference paradigm, to investigate visual rehearsal during an abstract visual WM task. Results suggested both groups used a visual strategy, but older adults struggled more when visual interference was administered first, perhaps due to difficulty developing non-visual strategies. In Experiment 2, a more meaningful task version was additionally administered, offering greater opportunity for multimodal coding. Despite the marked effect of age, both groups benefited from semantic availability to the same extent. Young adults reported a verbal strategy more than older adults, who reported less verbal labelling and more visual refreshing, and a less efficient approach overall. The results highlight age-related limitations in visual WM capacity and strategy use, but show potential for compensation, and a role for task practice.

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“…In some situations, people are able to strategically reallocate resources across memory items (e.g. Bays and Husain, 2008;Williams et al, 2013;Bengson and Luck, 2016;Fougnie et al, 2016;Atkinson et al, 2017), and internal knowledge of the quality of memories can be used to guide such behaviour (Suchow et al, 2017). Adults with better metacognition might therefore be able to adopt better strategies to adapt to changes in VSTM through the lifespan.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adults with better metacognition might therefore be able to adopt better strategies to adapt to changes in VSTM through the lifespan. For example, a strategy that may be helpful, and used especially by participants of higher fluid intelligence, is to attend to only a subset of items when presented with more than can be remembered (Cusack et al, 2009;Linke et al, 2011;Atkinson et al, 2017). Conversely, it may sometimes be beneficial to attend to the configuration of all items in the display, to the extent that these provide context, as described above, that helps to anchor memories of individual items (Bengson and Luck, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the ability of older adults to benefit from elaborative strategies in verbal associative memory is dependent on then having higher fluid intelligence (Frankenmolen et al, 2017). In the case of VSTM, performance can be boosted when strategy is guided by the simplest of instructions, in both students (Bengson and Luck, 2016) and older adults (Atkinson et al, 2017). We are therefore optimistic that strategic interventions, focused on attention to consistent context and self-monitoring of performance, may help to offset otherwise substantial declines in visual short-term memory performance with advancing age.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Visual short-term memory through the lifespan: preserved benefits of context and metacognition

Mitchell¹,

Cam‐CAN²,

Cusack³

2017

Preprint

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Visual short-term memory ability falls throughout the lifespan in healthy adults. Using a continuous report task, in a large, population-based sample, we first confirmed that this decline affects the quality and quantity of reported memories as well as knowledge of which item went where. Visual and sensorimotor precision also worsened with advancing age, but this did not account for the reduced memory performance.We then considered two strategies that older individuals might be able to adopt, to offset these memory declines: the use of contextual encoding, and metacognitive monitoring of performance.Context and metacognitive awareness were both associated with significantly better performance, however these effects did not interact with age in our sample. This suggests that older adults retain their capacity to boost memory performance through attention to external context and monitoring of their performance. Strategies that focus on taking advantage of these preserved abilities may therefore help to maintain short-term memory performance with advancing age. The paper reports on analysis of the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) data.3

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Remember some or remember all? Ageing and strategy effects in visual working memory

Cited by 33 publications

References 44 publications

Unimodal and crossmodal working memory binding is not differentially affected by age or Alzheimer’s disease.

Unimodal and crossmodal working memory binding is not differentially affected by age or Alzheimer’s disease.

Multimodal coding and strategic approach in young and older adults’ visual working memory performance

Visual short-term memory through the lifespan: preserved benefits of context and metacognition

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