title: Effect of cognitive load on working memory forgetting in aging.
abstract: Functional approaches to working memory (WM) have been proposed recently to better investigate "maintenance" and "processing" mechanisms. The cognitive load (CL) hypothesis presented in the "Time-Based Resource-Sharing" model (Barrouillet & Camos, 2007) suggests that forgetting from WM (maintenance) can be investigated by varying the presentation rate and processing speed (processing). In this study, young and elderly participants were compared on WM tasks in which the difference in processing speed was controlled by CL manipulations. Two main results were found. First, when time constraints (CL) were matched for the two groups, no aging effect was observed. Second, whereas a large variation in CL affected WM performance, a small CL manipulation had no effect on the elderly. This suggests that WM forgetting cannot be completely accounted for by the CL hypothesis. Rather, it highlights the need to explore restoration times in particular, and the nature of the refreshment mechanisms within maintenance.
authors.affiliation: Institut de Recherche en Sciences Psychologiques, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. chistine.baumans@uclouvain.be
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Baumans
authors.forename: Stephane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Adam
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Seron
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult