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Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children &#8211; Working Memory (CABC-WM)

The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children - Working Memory (CABC-WM) is a computer-based battery designed to assess different components of ...

Arizona State University - West

Forty-eight healthy adults aged 65-85 were recruited for structural magnetic resonance scans after an extensive neuropsychological battery that ensured a high degree of variability across the sample in performance on long-term memory tests, and on tests traditionally thought to rely on prefrontal cortex. Gray matter volumes were measured for three gyri in the frontal lobe (superior, middle, inferior), six gyri in the temporal lobe (superior, middle, inferior, fusiform, parahippocampal, and hippocampus), and the occipital lobe. Gray matter volumes declined across the age range evaluated, but with substantial regional variation--greatest in the inferior frontal, superior temporal, and middle temporal gyri but negligible in the occipital lobe. Both memory performance and executive function declined as the number of hyperintense regions in the subcortical white matter increased. Memory performance was also significantly correlated with gray matter volumes of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), and several regions of temporal neocortex. However, the correlations were all in the negative direction; better memory performance was associated with smaller volumes. Several previous reports of significant negative correlations between gray matter volumes and memory performance are described, so that the possible reasons for this surprising finding are discussed.

Memory and executive function in older adults: relationships with temporal and prefrontal gray matter volumes and white matter hyperintensities.

The prefrontal cortex is strongly engaged by some, but not all, episodic memory tests. Prior work has shown that source recognition tests--those that require memory for conjunctions of studied attributes--yield deficient performance in patients with prefrontal damage and greater prefrontal activity in healthy subjects, as compared to simple recognition tests. Here, we tested the hypothesis that there is no intrinsic relationship between the prefrontal cortex and source memory, but that the prefrontal cortex is engaged by the demand to retrieve weakly encoded relationships. Subjects attempted to remember object/color conjunctions after an encoding task that focused on object identity alone, and an integrative encoding task that encouraged attention to object/color relationships. After the integrative encoding task, the late prefrontal brain electrical activity that typically occurs in source memory tests was eliminated. Earlier brain electrical activity related to successful recognition of the objects was unaffected by the nature of prior encoding.

Prefrontal engagement during source memory retrieval depends on the prior encoding task.

It is well established that source memory retrieval--remembering relationships between a core item and some additional attribute of an event--engages prefrontal cortex (PFC) more than simple item memory. In event-related potentials (ERPs), this is manifest in a late-onset difference over PFC between studied items which mandate retrieval of a second attribute, and unstudied items which can be immediately rejected. Although some sorts of attribute conjunctions are easier to remember than others, the role of source retrieval difficulty on prefrontal activity has received little attention. We examined memory for conjunctions of object shape and color when color was an integral part of the depicted object, and when monochrome objects were surrounded by colored frames. Source accuracy was reliably worse when shape and color were spatially separated, but prefrontal activity did not vary across the object-color and frame-color conditions. The insensitivity of prefrontal ERPs to this perceptual manipulation of difficulty stands in contrast to their sensitivity to encoding task: deliberate voluntary effort to integrate objects and colors during encoding reduced prefrontal activity during retrieval, but perceptual organization of stimuli did not. The amplitudes of ERPs over parietal cortex were larger for frame-color than object-color stimuli during both study and test phases of the memory task. Individual variability in parietal ERPs was strongly correlated with memory accuracy, which we suggest reflects a contribution of visual working memory to long-term memory. We discuss multiple bottlenecks for source memory performance.

Perceptual difficulty in source memory encoding and retrieval: prefrontal versus parietal electrical brain activity.

This study investigated the structure of working memory in young school-age children by testing the fit of three competing theoretical models using a wide variety of tasks. The best fitting models were then used to assess the relationship between working memory and nonverbal measures of fluid reasoning (Gf) and visual processing (Gv) intelligence. One hundred sixty-eight English-speaking 7-9 year olds with typical development, from three states, participated. Results showed that Cowan's three-factor embedded processes model fit the data slightly better than Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) three-factor model (specified according to Baddeley, 1986) and decisively better than Baddeley's (2000) four-factor model that included an episodic buffer. The focus of attention factor in Cowan's model was a significant predictor of Gf and Gv. The results suggest that the focus of attention, rather than storage, drives the relationship between working memory, Gf, and Gv in young school-age children. Our results do not rule out the Baddeley and Hitch model, but they place constraints on both it and Cowan's model. A common attentional component is needed for feature binding, running digit span, and visual short-term memory tasks; phonological storage is separate, as is a component of central executive processing involved in task manipulation. The results contribute to a zeitgeist in which working memory models are coming together on common ground (cf. Cowan, Saults, & Blume, 2014; Hu, Allen, Baddeley, & Hitch, 2016).

Trudy Kuo

School of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences,
School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

Arizona State University - West

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Trudy Kuo

School of Social and Behavioral Sciences,New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences,School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

Arizona State University - West

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

School of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences,
School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences