It has been recently shown that temporal orienting demands controlled attention (Capizzi et al., 2012). However, there is current debate on whether temporal preparation guided by regular rhythms also requires the generation of endogenous temporal expectancies or rather involves a mechanism independent of executive control processes. We investigated this issue by using a dual-task paradigm in tw...

Working memory (WM) declines prominently during normal aging. The mechanisms underlying this decline are not fully understood. The authors analyzed performance on 2 versions of a 2-back spatial WM task to assess younger and older adults' responses to lures (i.e., nontarget items that match an item earlier in the sequence but not at the current target lag). Results demonstrate lure interference ...

By administering Simon, Simon switching, and operation-span working memory tasks to Cantonese-English bilingual children who varied in their first-language (L1, Cantonese) and second-language (L2, English) proficiencies, as quantified by standardized vocabulary test performance, the current study examined the effects of L1 and L2 proficiency on attentional control performance. Apart from mean p...

This study tested the common assumption that, to be most effective, working memory (WM) training should be adaptive (i.e., task difficulty is adjusted to individual performance). Indirect evidence for this assumption stems from studies comparing adaptive training to a condition in which tasks are practiced on the easiest level of difficulty only [cf. Klingberg (Trends Cogn Sci 14:317-324, 2010)...

This research examined the role of working memory (WM) in probability judgment and hypothesis generation using a simulated task that involved estimating the likelihood that particular menu items would be ordered by customers at a dinner. Five main findings were observed. First, judgments of the likelihood of individual items were made relative to alternatives retrieved from long-term memory. Se...

Working memory (WM) maintains information in a state that it is available for processing. A host of various concepts exist which define this core function at different levels of abstraction. The present article intended to bring together existing cognitive and neural explanatory approaches about the architecture and neural mechanisms of information maintenance in WM. For this, we highlight how ...

In the current literature, empirical and conceptual distinctions have been drawn between a more or less passive short-term memory (STM) system and a more dynamic working memory (WM) system. Distinct tasks have been developed to measure their capacity and research has generally shown that, for adults, WM, and not STM, is a reliable predictor of general cognitive ability. However, the locus of th...

According to some current theories, the focus of attention (FOA), part of working memory, represents items in a privileged state that is more accessible than items stored in other memory systems. One line of evidence supporting the distinction between the FOA and other memory systems is the finding that items in the FOA are immune to proactive interference (when something learned earlier impair...

The theoretical concepts short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) have been used to refer to the maintenance and the maintenance plus manipulation of information, respectively. Although they are conceptually different, the use of the terms STM and WM in literature is not always strict. STM and WM are different theoretical concepts that are assumed to reflect different cognitive functions...