| 1. |
- Brose, Annette, et al.
(författare)
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Adult Age Differences in Covariation of Motivation and Working Memory Performance: Contrasting Between-Person and Within-Person Findings
- 2010
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Ingår i: Research in Human Development. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1542-7609 .- 1542-7617. ; 7:1, s. 61-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Developmental theorists have proposed for a long time that the prevailing focus on stable individual differences has obstructed the discovery of short-term covariations between cognitive performance and contextual influences within individuals that may help to uncover mechanisms underlying long-term change. As an initial step to overcome this imbalance, we observed measures of motivation and working memory (WM) in 101 younger and 103 older adults across 100 occasions. Our main goals were to (1) investigate day-to-day relations between motivation and WM, (2) show that these relations differ between groups of younger and older adults, and (3) test whether the within-person and between-person structures linking motivational variables to WM are equivalent (i.e., the ergodicity assumption). The covariation between motivation and WM was generally positive in younger adults. In contrast, older adults showed reduced variability in motivation, increased variability across trials, and small reliability-adjusted correlations between motivation and WM. Within-person structures differed reliably across individuals, defying the ergodicity assumption. We discuss the implications of our findings for developmental theory and design, stressing the need to explore the effects of between-person differences in short-term covariations on long-term developmental change.
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| 2. |
- Brose, Annette, et al.
(författare)
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Daily Fluctuations in Positive Affect Positively Co-Vary With Working Memory Performance
- 2014
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Ingår i: Emotion. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 1528-3542 .- 1931-1516. ; 14:1, s. 1-6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Positive affect is related to cognitive performance in multiple ways. It is associated with motivational aspects of performance, affective states capture attention, and information processing modes are a function of affect. In this study, we examined whether these links are relevant within individuals across time when they experience minor ups and downs of positive affect and work on cognitive tasks in the laboratory on a day-to-day basis. Using a microlongitudinal design, 101 younger adults (20-31 years of age) worked on 3 working memory tasks on about 100 occasions. Every day, they also reported on their momentary affect and their motivation to work on the tasks. In 2 of the 3 tasks, performance was enhanced on days when positive affect was above average. This performance enhancement was also associated with more motivation. Importantly, increases in task performance on days with above-average positive affect were mainly unrelated to variations in negative affect. This study's results are in line with between-person findings suggesting that high levels of well-being are associated with successful outcomes. They imply that success on cognitively demanding tasks is more likely on days when feeling happier.
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| 3. |
- Brose, Annette, et al.
(författare)
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Daily variability in working memory is coupled with negative affect : the role of attention and motivation
- 2012
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Ingår i: Emotion. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 1528-3542 .- 1931-1516. ; 12:3, s. 605-617
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Across days, individuals experience varying levels of negative affect, control of attention, and motivation. We investigated whether this intraindividual variability was coupled with daily fluctuations in working memory (WM) performance. In 100 days, 101 younger individuals worked on a spatial N-back task and rated negative affect, control of attention, and motivation. Results showed that individuals differed in how reliably WM performance fluctuated across days, and that subjective experiences were primarily linked to performance accuracy. WM performance was lower on days with higher levels of negative affect, reduced control of attention, and reduced task-related motivation. Thus, variables that were found to predict WM in between-subjects designs showed important relationships to WM at the within-person level. In addition, there was shared predictive variance among predictors of WM. Days with increased negative affect and reduced performance were also days with reduced control of attention and reduced motivation to work on tasks. These findings are in line with proposed mechanisms linking negative affect and cognitive performance.
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| 4. |
- Brose, Annette, et al.
(författare)
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Normal aging dampens the link between intrusive thoughts and negative affect in reaction to daily stressors
- 2011
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Ingår i: Psychology and aging. - Arlington, VA : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0882-7974 .- 1939-1498. ; 26:2, s. 488-502
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We charted daily variations in intrusive thoughts to gain access to adult age differences in affective reactivity to daily stressors. On 100 days, 101 younger and 103 older adults reported stressors, intrusive thoughts, and negative affect. Although increments in intrusive thoughts were similar in both age groups on days with stressors, older adults' negative affect increased less than younger adults' on such days. In addition, (a) levels of intrusive thoughts and negative affect across study time were positively associated; (b) days with increased thoughts were days with increased negative affect; and (c) experiencing above-average intrusive thoughts about stressors strengthened affective reactions to stress. Relative to younger adults, all three associations were reduced in older adults. We tentatively conclude that normal aging dampens the stress-induced link between intrusive thoughts and affect. This dampening may contribute to preserved affective well-being and reduced affective reactivity to daily stress in old age.
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| 5. |
- Grandy, Thomas H., et al.
(författare)
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Individual alpha peak frequency is related to latent factors of general cognitive abilities
- 2013
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Ingår i: NeuroImage. - : Elsevier BV. - 1053-8119 .- 1095-9572. ; 79, s. 10-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Some eighty years after the discovery of the human electroencephalogram (EEG) and its dominant rhythm, alpha (similar to 10 Hz), the neurophysiological functions and behavioral correlates of alpha oscillations are still under debate. Similarly, the biological mechanisms contributing to the general factor of intelligence, or g, have been under scrutiny for decades. Individual alpha frequency (IAF), a trait-like parameter of the EEG, has been found to correlate with individual differences in cognitive performance and cognitive abilities. Informed by large-scale theories of neural organization emphasizing the general functional significance of oscillatory activity, the present study replicates and extends these findings by testing the hypothesis that IAF is related to intelligence at the level of g, rather than at the level of specific cognitive abilities. Structural equation modeling allowed us to statistically control for measurement error when estimating the association between IAF and intellectual functioning. In line with our hypothesis, we found a statistically reliable and substantial correlation between IAF and g (r = .40). The magnitude of this correlation did not differ significantly between younger and older adults, and captured all of the covariation between IAF and the cognitive abilities of reasoning, memory, and perceptual speed. The observed association between IAF and g provides a parsimonious explanation for the commonly observed diffuse pattern of correlations between IAF and cognitive performance. We conclude that IAF is a marker of global architectural and functional properties of the human brain.
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| 6. |
- Grandy, Thomas H., et al.
(författare)
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Peak individual alpha frequency qualifies as a stable neurophysiological trait marker in healthy younger and older adults
- 2013
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Ingår i: Psychophysiology. - : Wiley. - 0048-5772 .- 1469-8986 .- 1540-5958. ; 50:6, s. 570-582
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The individual alpha frequency (IAF) of the human EEG reflects systemic properties of the brain, is highly heritable, and relates to cognitive functioning. Not much is known about the modifiability of IAF by cognitive interventions. We report analyses of resting EEG from a large-scale training study in which healthy younger (2031 years, N=30) and older (6580 years, N=28) adults practiced 12 cognitive tasks for approximate to 100 1-h sessions. EEG was recorded before and after the cognitive training intervention. In both age groups, IAF (and, in a control analysis, alpha amplitude) did not change, despite large gains in cognitive performance. As within-session reliability and test-retest stability were high for both age groups, imprecise measurements cannot account for the findings. In sum, IAF is highly stable in healthy adults up to 80 years, not easily modifiable by cognitive interventions alone, and thus qualifies as a stable neurophysiological trait marker.
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| 7. |
- Kühn, Simone, et al.
(författare)
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Brain areas consistently linked to individual differences in perceptual decision-making in younger as well as older adults before and after training
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of cognitive neuroscience. - Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. - 0898-929X .- 1530-8898. ; 23:9, s. 2147-2158
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Perceptual decision-making performance depends on several cognitive and neural processes. Here, we fit Ratcliff's diffusion model to accuracy data and reaction-time distributions from one numerical and one verbal two-choice perceptual-decision task to deconstruct these performance measures into the rate of evidence accumulation (i.e., drift rate), response criterion setting (i.e., boundary separation), and peripheral aspects of performance (i.e., nondecision time). These theoretical processes are then related to individual differences in brain activation by means of multiple regression. The sample consisted of 24 younger and 15 older adults performing the task in fMRI before and after 100 daily 1-hr behavioral training sessions in a multitude of cognitive tasks. Results showed that individual differences in boundary separation were related to striatal activity, whereas differences in drift rate were related to activity in the inferior parietal lobe. These associations were not significantly modified by adult age or perceptual expertise. We conclude that the striatum is involved in regulating response thresholds, whereas the inferior parietal lobe might represent decision-making evidence related to letters and numbers.
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| 8. |
- Kühn, Simone, et al.
(författare)
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The dynamics of change in striatal activity following updating training
- 2013
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Ingår i: Human Brain Mapping. - : Wiley. - 1065-9471 .- 1097-0193. ; 34:7, s. 1530-1541
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increases in striatal activity have been suggested to mediate training-related improvements in working-memory ability. We investigated the temporal dynamics of changes in task-related brain activity following training of working memory. Participants in an experimental group and an active control group, trained on easier tasks of a constant difficulty in shorter sessions than the experimental group, were measured before, after about 1 week, and after more than 50 days of training. In the experimental group an initial increase of working-memory related activity in the functionally defined right striatum and anatomically defined right and left putamen was followed by decreases, resulting in an inverted u-shape function that relates activity to training over time. Activity increases in the striatum developed slower in the active control group, observed at the second posttest after more than 50 days of training. In the functionally defined left striatum, initial activity increases were maintained after more extensive training and the pattern was similar for the two groups. These results shed new light on the relation between activity in the striatum (especially the putamen) and the effects of working memory training, and illustrate the importance of multiple measurements for interpreting effects of training on regional brain activity.
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| 9. |
- Kuhn, Simone, et al.
(författare)
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The neural representation of intrusive thoughts
- 2013
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Ingår i: Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1749-5024 .- 1749-5016. ; 8:6, s. 688-693
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Based on the philosophical notion that language embodies thought we investigated whether a habitual tendency for intrusive thought that younger and older participants report over a period of 100 sessions, spread out over about 6 months, is associated with brain regions related to language production. In favour of this hypothesis, we found that individual differences in habitual intrusive thoughts are correlated with activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG, Broca's area) as well as the cingulate cortex (CC) during a two-choice reaction-time task in fMRI. Participants who habitually tended to experience intrusive thoughts showed greater activity during task-free (baseline) compared to task periods in brain regions involved in language production. Task performance was unrelated to individual differences in intrusive thoughts. We conclude that intrusive thoughts may be represented in a language-like format and that individuals reporting a habitually higher tendency for intrusive thoughts may have stronger and more habitual inner speech processes.
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| 10. |
- Lövdén, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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A theoretical framework for the study of adult cognitive plasticity
- 2010
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Ingår i: Psychological Bulletin. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 1939-1455 .- 0033-2909. ; 136:4, s. 659-676
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Does plasticity contribute to adult cognitive development, and if so, in what ways? The vague and overused concept of plasticity makes these controversial questions difficult to answer. In this article, we refine the notion of adult cognitive plasticity and sharpen its conceptual distinctiveness. According to our framework, adult cognitive plasticity is driven by a prolonged mismatch between functional organismic supplies and environmental demands and denotes the brain's capacity for anatomically implementing reactive changes in behavioral flexibility (i.e., the possible range of performance and function). We distinguish between 2 interconnected but distinct cognitive outcomes of adult cognitive plasticity: alterations in processing efficiency and alterations in representations. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in evaluating and interpreting (a) increments in frontal brain activations in the course of normal aging and (b) the effects of cognitive training in adulthood and old age. Finally, we outline new research questions and predictions generated by the present framework and recommend design features for future cognitive-training studies.
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