working memory

Cultural differences & developmental changes in working memory

January, 2010

A comparison of Ugandan and Senegalese children has found differences in which working memory system is dominant. This may be a product of literacy training.

‘Working memory’ is thought to consist of three components: one concerned with auditory-verbal processing, one with visual-spatial processing, and a central executive that controls both. It has been hypothesized that the relationships between the components changes as children develop. Very young children are more reliant on visuospatial processing, but later the auditory-verbal module becomes more dominant. It has also been found that the two sensory modules are not strongly associated in younger (5-8) American children, but are strongly associated in older children (9-12). The same study found that this pattern was also found in Laotian children, but not in children from the Congo, none of whom showed a strong association between visual and auditory working memory. Now a new study has found that Ugandan children showed greater dominance of the auditory-verbal module, particularly among the older children (8 ½ +); however, the visuospatial module was dominant among Senegalese children, both younger and older. It is hypothesized that the cultural differences are a product of literacy training — school enrolment was much less consistent among the Senegalese. But there may also be a link to nutritional status.

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Women teachers transfer their fear of doing math to girls

January, 2010

A study involving first- and second-grade teachers found that boys' math performance was not related to their (female) teacher's math anxiety while girls' math achievement was.

Consistent with studies showing that gender stereotypes can worsen math performance in females, a year-long study involving 17 first- and second-grade teachers and their 52 boy and 65 girl students has found that boys' math performance was not related to their (female) teacher's math anxiety while girls' math achievement was. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female. Math achievement was unrelated to teacher math anxiety in both boys and girls at the beginning of the school year. Moreover, achievement was negatively associated with belief in gender stereotypes. Girls who confirmed a belief that boys are better in math than girls scored six points lower in math achievement than did boys or girls who had not developed a belief in the stereotype (102 versus 108). Research has found that elementary education majors have the highest rate of mathematics anxiety of any college major.

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[1450] Beilock, S. L., Gunderson E. A., Ramirez G., & Levine S. C.
(2010).  Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(5), 1860 - 1863.

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Helping older adults remember whether they’ve done something

January, 2010

Older adults are more likely to forget that they've done something. A new study has found that doing something unusual (such as putting a hand on their head) at the same time helps seniors remember having done the task.

Previous research has shown that older adults are more likely to incorrectly repeat an action in situations where a prospective memory task has become habitual — for example, taking more medication because they’ve forgotten they’ve already taken it. A new study has found that doing something unusual at the same time helps seniors remember having done the task. In the study, older adults told to put a hand on their heads whenever they made a particular response, reduced the level of repetition errors to that of younger adults. It’s suggested that doing something unusual, like knocking on wood or patting yourself on the head, while taking a daily dose of medicine may be an effective strategy to help seniors remember whether they've already taken their daily medications.

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Older brains make good use of 'useless' information

January, 2010

A new study finds a decision-making advantage to the increased difficulty older brains have in filtering out irrelevant information.

It’s now well established that older brains tend to find it harder to filter out irrelevant information. But now a new study suggests that that isn’t all bad. The study compared the performance of 24 younger adults (17-29) and 24 older adults (60-73) on two memory tasks separated by a 10-minute break. In the first task, they were shown pictures overlapped by irrelevant words, told to ignore the words and concentrate on the pictures only, and to respond every time the same picture appeared twice in a row. The second task required them to remember how the pictures and words were paired together in the first task. The older adults showed a 30% advantage over younger adults in their memory for the preserved pairs. It’s suggested that older adults encode extraneous co-occurrences in the environment and transfer this knowledge to subsequent tasks, improving their ability to make decisions.

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[276] Campbell, K. L., Hasher L., & Thomas R. C.
(2010).  Hyper-binding: a unique age effect.
Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 21(3), 399 - 405.

Full text available at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/01/15/0956797609359910.full

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Brain system behind general intelligence identified

February, 2010

Data from brain-lesion patients supports the idea that general intelligence depends on the brain's ability to integrate several different kinds of processing, and resides in a distributed network.

Using a large data set of 241 brain-lesion patients, researchers have mapped the location of each patient's lesion and correlated that with each patient's IQ score to produce a map of the brain regions that influence intelligence. Consistent with other recent findings, and with the theory that general intelligence depends on the brain's ability to integrate several different kinds of processing, they found general intelligence was determined by a distributed network in the frontal and parietal cortex, critically including white matter association tracts and frontopolar cortex. They suggest that general intelligence draws on connections between regions that integrate verbal, visuospatial, working memory, and executive processes.

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[173] Gläscher, J., Rudrauf D., Colom R., Paul L. K., Tranel D., Damasio H., et al.
(2010).  Distributed neural system for general intelligence revealed by lesion mapping.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(10), 4705 - 4709.

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Mothers influence how children develop advanced cognitive functions

February, 2010

A study of 80 pairs of middle-income Canadian mothers and their year-old babies has revealed conversational strategies that are associated with better executive skills among toddlers.

A study of 80 pairs of middle-income Canadian mothers and their year-old babies has revealed that children of mothers who answered their children's requests for help quickly and accurately; talked about their children's preferences, thoughts, and memories during play; and encouraged successful strategies to help solve difficult problems, performed better at a year and a half and 2 years on tasks that call for executive skills, compared to children whose mothers didn't use these techniques.

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Stress raises risk of mental decline in older diabetics

February, 2010

A large study of older adults with type-2 diabetes has found those with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol are more likely to have experienced cognitive decline.

A study involving over 1000 older men and women (60-75) with type-2 diabetes has found that those with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood are more likely to have experienced cognitive decline. Higher fasting cortisol levels were associated with greater estimated cognitive decline in general intelligence, working memory and processing speed. This was independent of mood, education, metabolic variables and cardiovascular disease. Strategies aimed at lowering stress levels may be helpful for older diabetics.

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The protective effects of mindfulness training

February, 2010

Mindfulness Training had a positive effect on both working memory capacity and mood in a group of Marine reservists during the high-stress pre-deployment interval.

Mindfulness Training had a positive effect on both working memory capacity and mood in a group of Marine reservists during the high-stress pre-deployment interval. While those who weren’t given the 8-week MT program, as well as those who spent little time engaging in mindfulness exercises, showed greater negative mood and decreased working memory capacity over the eight weeks, those who recorded high practice time showed increased capacity and decreased negative mood. A civilian control group showed no change in working memory capacity over the period. The program, called Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT™), blended mindfulness skills training with concrete applications for the operational environment and information and skills about stress, trauma and resilience in the body. The researchers suggest that mindfulness training may help anyone who must maintain peak performance in the face of extremely stressful circumstances.

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Is practice sufficient for expertise?

July, 2010

A study of sight-reading ability in pianists confirms the importance of many hours of practice, but also suggests that working memory capacity makes a difference.

A new study challenges the popular theory that expertise is simply a product of tens of thousands of hours of deliberate practice. Not that anyone is claiming that this practice isn’t necessary — but it may not be sufficient. A study looking at pianists’ ability to sight-read music reveals working memory capacity helps sight-reading regardless of how much someone has practiced.

The study involved 57 volunteers who had played piano for an average of 18.6 years (range from one to 57 years). Their estimated hours of overall practice ranged from 260 to 31,096 (average: 5806), and hours of sight-reading practice ranged from zero to 9,048 (average: 1487 hours). Statistical analysis revealed that although hours of practice was the most important factor, nevertheless, working memory capacity did, independently, account for a small but significant amount of the variance between individuals.

It is interesting that not only did WMC have an effect independent of hours of practice, but hours of practice apparently had no effect on WMC — although the study was too small to tell whether a lot of practice at an early age might have affected WMC (previous research has indicated that music training can increase IQ in children).

The study is also too small to properly judge the effects of the 10,000 hours deliberate practice claimed necessary for expertise: the researchers did not advise the number of participants that were at that level, but the numbers suggest it was low.

It should also be noted that an earlier study involving 52 accomplished pianists found no effect of WMC on sight-reading ability (but did find a related effect: the ability to tap two fingers rapidly in alternation and to press a computer key quickly in response to visual and acoustic cues was unrelated to practice but correlated positively with good sight-readers).

Nevertheless, the findings are interesting, and do agree with what I imagine is the ‘commonsense’ view: yes, becoming an expert is all about the hours of effective practice you put in, but there are intellectual qualities that also matter. The question is: do they matter once you’ve put in the requisite hours of good practice?

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Working memory training makes mice smarter

March, 2010

A mouse study has found working memory training improved their proficiency on a wide range of cognitive tests, and helped them better retained their cognitive abilities into old age.

A study in which 60 young adult mice were trained on a series of maze exercises designed to challenge and improve their working memory ability (in terms of retaining and using current spatial information), has found that the mice improved their proficiency on a wide range of cognitive tests, and moreover better retained their cognitive abilities into old age.

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