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Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment
Published on: September 20, 2020
Working memory for item and temporal information in younger and older adults
Jennifer McCabe1, Marilyn Hartman
1Psychology Department, Marietta College, 215 Fifth Street, Marietta, OH, USA.
Abstract:
Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a performance advantage over less recent information, but was susceptible to the same temporal context errors found in all adjacent-to-target lure positions. Lures most distant from the current item showed a performance rebound. The pattern of increased magnitudes of age effects at adjacent-to-target positions indicated a reduction in older adults' working memory for temporal context information above and beyond item memory declines. Results overall support the emphasis on context information as a critical factor in working memory and cognitive aging.
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