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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment

Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment

Published on: September 20, 2020

Mechanisms underlying age- and performance-related differences in working memory.

Kirk R Daffner¹, Hyemi Chong, Xue Sun

¹Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA. kdaffner@partners.org

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

|July 13, 2010

Summary

Older adults and low-performing young adults show working memory deficits due to impaired early processing and resource allocation. High performers maintain better neural efficiency and decision-making capacity across task demands.

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Working Memory Training for Older Participants: A Control Group Training Regimen and Initial Intellectual Functioning Assessment

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Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Published on: June 12, 2017

Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuropsychology

Background:

Working memory capacity declines with age and varies with individual performance.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer subsecond temporal resolution to study cognitive processes.

Purpose of the Study:

Investigate age- and performance-related differences in working memory mechanisms.
Examine neural correlates of information processing and resource allocation during a verbal n-back task.

Main Methods:

Used a verbal n-back task with varying difficulty levels in young and old participants.
Divided participants into high and low performers based on accuracy.
Analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically anterior N2, P3, and posterior slow wave components.

Main Results:

Old and low-performing young subjects showed deficits in early mismatch/match detection (anterior N2) and decision-making (P3).
High performers demonstrated greater neural efficiency and resource allocation capacity for decision-making compared to low performers.
Increased task demands led to greater allocation of resources to sustained attention (posterior slow wave) across all groups, exceeding capacity in low performers.

Conclusions:

Age and performance level impact early sensory processing and resource allocation in working memory.
Neural efficiency and flexible resource allocation are critical for maintaining working memory performance under increasing cognitive load.
Deficits in low performers suggest a failure to adequately allocate resources to decision-making under high demand, impacting overall performance.