| 1. |
- Noack, Hannes, et al.
(författare)
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Cognitive plasticity in adulthood and old age: Gauging the generality of cognitive intervention effects
- 2009
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Ingår i: Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. - 1878-3627. ; 27:5, s. 435-453
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Interventions enabling aging individuals to fulfill their plastic potential promise to postpone, attenuate, or even reverse the adverse effects of senescent brain changes on cognitive abilities and everyday competence in old age. Based on an overview of the concept of plasticity in lifespan development, we selectively review evidence from cognitive intervention studies and conclude that most of them have failed to observe generalizable performance improvements, as documented by the small size and scope of positive transfer to untrained tasks. We further note that generally accepted criteria for defining transfer distance are lacking, rendering the relevant evidence difficult to interpret. Hence, we propose a taxonomy of transfer distance based on the structure of human intellectual abilities.
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| 2. |
- Schmiedek, Florian, et al.
(författare)
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Complex Span Versus Updating Tasks of Working Memory: The Gap Is Not That Deep
- 2009
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Ingår i: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0278-7393 .- 1939-1285. ; 35:4, s. 1089-1096
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How to best measure working memory capacity is an issue of ongoing debate. Besides established complex span tasks, which combine short-term memory demands with generally unrelated secondary tasks, there exists a set of paradigms characterized by continuous and simultaneous updating of several items in working memory, such as the n-back, memory updating, or alpha span tasks. With a latent variable analysis (N = 96) based on content-heterogeneous operationalizations of both task families, the authors found a latent correlation between a complex span factor and an updating factor that was not statistically different from unity (r = .96). Moreover, both factors predicted fluid intelligence (reasoning) equally well. The authors conclude that updating tasks measure working memory equally well as complex span tasks. Processes involved in building, maintaining, and updating arbitrary bindings may constitute the common working memory ability underlying performance on reasoning, complex span, and updating tasks.
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| 3. |
- Schmiedek, Florian, et al.
(författare)
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On the Relation of Mean Reaction Time and Intraindividual Reaction Time Variability
- 2009
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Ingår i: Psychology and Aging. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0882-7974 .- 1939-1498. ; 24:4, s. 841-857
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Researchers often statistically control for means when examining individual or age-associated differences in variances, assuming that the relation between the 2 is linear and invariant within and across individuals and age groups. We tested this assumption in the domain of working memory by applying variance-heterogeneity multilevel models to reaction times in the n-back task. Data are from the COGITO study, which comprises 101 younger and 103 older adults assessed in over 100 daily sessions. We found that relations between means and variances vary reliably across age groups and individuals, thereby contradicting the invariant linearity assumption. We argue that statistical control approaches need to be replaced by theoretical models that simultaneously estimate central tendency and dispersion of latencies and accuracies and illustrate this claim by applying the diffusion model to the same data. Finally, we note that differences in reliability between estimates for means and variances need to be considered when comparing their unique contributions to developmental outcomes.
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