OBJECTIVES Multitasking is a challenging aspect of human behavior, especially if the concurrently performed tasks are different in nature. Several studies demonstrated pronounced performance decrements (dual-task costs) in older adults for combinations of cognitive and motor tasks. However, patterns of costs among component tasks differed across studies and reasons for participants' resource al...

In the present study we elucidate the emotional and executive control interactions that might underlie optimism and pessimism. Participants completed a self-report measure of optimism/pessimism and performed an emotion faces categorisation task and an emotion n-back task in which they indicated whether each of a series of faces had the same or a different emotional expression (happy, sad, neutr...

The ability to maintain the serial order of events is recognized as a major function of working memory. Although general models of working memory postulate a close link between working memory and attention, such a link has so far not been proposed specifically for serial-order working memory. The present study provided the first empirical demonstration of a direct link between serial order in v...

Working memory (WM) is closely linked to conscious awareness: In most conceptions of WM, the inputs to WM need to be conscious. The findings of some recent studies, however, have been taken to suggest that WM can indeed operate on non-conscious inputs. Here, we argue that these findings can easily be accommodated by conventional conceptions of non-conscious perception and conscious WM. We concl...

Walking animals rely on working memory to avoid obstacles. One example is the stepping of the hindlegs of quadrupeds over an obstacle. In this case, the obstacle is not visible at the time of hindleg stepping, because of its position between the fore and hindlegs, and working memory must be used to avoid it. We have previously shown that this memory is very precise and surprisingly long-lasting...

This study examined the neural dynamics of working memory (WM) processing under long-term stress. Forty participants who had been exposed to a long period of major exam preparation (six months) and twenty-one control participants performed a numerical n-back task (n = 1, 2) while electroencephalograms were recorded. Psychological and endocrinal measurements confirmed significantly higher levels...

We address the issue of how visual information stored in working memory (WM) is introspected. In other words, how do we become aware of WM content in order to consciously examine or manipulate it? Influential models of WM have suggested that WM representations are either conscious by definition, or directly accessible for conscious inspection. We propose that WM introspection does not operate o...

Non-native speakers have lower linguistic competence than native speakers, which renders their language less reliable in conveying their intentions. We suggest that expectations of lower competence lead listeners to adapt their manner of processing when they listen to non-native speakers. We propose that listeners use cognitive resources to adjust by increasing their reliance on top-down proces...

We developed a novel four-dimensional spatial task called Shapebuilder and used it to predict performance on a wide variety of cognitive tasks. In six experiments, we illustrate that Shapebuilder: (1) Loads on a common factor with complex working memory (WM) span tasks and that it predicts performance on quantitative reasoning tasks and Ravens Progressive Matrices (Experiment 1), (2) Correlates...

Visual awareness is hypothesized to be intimately related to visual working memory (WM), such that information present in WM is thought to have necessarily been represented consciously. Recent work has challenged this longstanding view by demonstrating that visual stimuli rated by observers as unseen can nevertheless be maintained over a delay period. These experiments have been criticized, how...