Effects of increased processing demands on age differences in working memory.
Three studies investigated (a) the plausibility of the claim that increasing the processing demands in a memory task contributes to greater involvement of a central processor and (b) the effects of altering reliance on the central processor on the magnitude of age-related differences in working-memory tasks. In the first study, young adults performed versions of 2 tasks presumed to vary in the degree of reliance on the central processor. In the second and third studies, young and older adults performed versions of a computation-span task that were assumed to vary along a rough continuum of the amount of required processing. The results indicated that although a central processor appears to be involved when working-memory tasks require simultaneous storage and processing of information, age-related differences in working memory seem to be determined at least as much by differences in the capacity of storage as by differences in the efficiency of processing.
Babcock
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School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 30332-0170.
Salthouse
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TA
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning