Working Memory, Attention, and Intelligence Flashcards
features of cognitive tests
- Standardised to allow comparisons
- Reliable
- Valid
case of Kim Peek
- IQ of 87
- Mentally handicapped
- Recommended for lobotomy
- Incredible semantic memory
- No agreement about how or why his extraordinary memory arose
- Savant
- Not autistic
savant syndrome
- Very rare (1 in 1 million, more likely in men, more common in autism)
- Very common in autism but both can exist separately
- Very poorly understood
- Can be acquired through brain injury (very rare) (Left anterior temporal lobe - Possibly releases right hemisphere? (many have astonishing creativity and artistic ability))
Spearman’s G model of IQ
- Performance on different cognitive tasks is correlated (Verbal, spatial, numerical, (reasoning): combinations of these)
- Not complete correlation
- Suggests underlying general (g) factor (Can be split into fluid (unlearned) and crystal (learned))
- Plus task-specific (s) factor
IQ and brain size - sex differences
Modest relationship
Sex differences?
1. No overall difference in mean scores
2. May be differences on aspects of the test
Women better at verbal
Men better at spatial
May be reflected in correlations with size of different brain regions
WM and the DLPFC
- Brodmann areas 9 and 46
- Monitoring and manipulation of WM content
- Susceptible to traumatic brain injury (TBI)
role of DLPFC
- Abstract reasoning
- Top-down regulation of attention
- Projects to hippocampus (Encoding LTM, Recalling memory to replay)
- Many other regions involved in WM
what part of WM does the DIGIT SPAN FORWARD TASK measure
maintenance
DIGIT SPAN FORWARD TASK
- Verbal/Auditory maintenance
- Administrator recites a series of numbers (1 per second, monotone delivery)
- Subject asked to repeat those numbers
- The length of series increased with each trial
- Task ends when participant fails twice at a specific length
- (length = score)
what does the N-BACK TASK measure
monitoring
N-BACK TASK
- Remembering backwards
- A series of digits are presented, one at a time (~15-50 in total)
- Answer ‘yes’ if a digit appeared ‘n’ back
- ‘n’ is the number of digits back you have to remember
- Where n = zero, is a pure monitoring task
- Where N>1, is a monitoring and updating task
- The higher the ‘n’ the harder the task
Stimuli can be varied to test different sub-types of working memory
1. letters/words (verbal + auditory)
2. Sound (auditory)
3. Shapes (spatial)
4. Smells (olfactory)
what does the LETTER-NUMBER SEQUENCING TASK measure
manipulation
LETTER-NUMBER SEQUENCING TASK
- Administrator reads out a string of words and letters
- Participant must first say the numbers in ascending order and then the letters in alphabetical order.
- Cut-off when cannot reproduce a certain string length 3 times
Manipulation of verbal working memory
WMM
BADDELEY AND HITCH WM MODEL
- Doesn’t full mature until early adulthood
- Declines with age
- Affected by internal and external factors
- Measured experimentally in a number of ways: Tasks use different outcomes
Verbal, visual, spatial
- Sub-systems with different functions
- Can be split into sights and sounds
sound processing in WM
SOUNDS PROCESSED IN PHONOLOGICAL LOOP: (One component of WM)
Simple example 1 – attempt to recall a string of letters by repeating over and over
1. Being required to articulate an irrelevant word destroys
performance
2. Similar sounding letters are harder to remember
Simple example 2 - earworm
PL – 2 PARTS:
- Phonological store: Holds auditory material (e.g. Spoken words), Keeps things in order, Rapid decay
- Articulatory loop: ‘inner voice’, ‘rehearses’ audio material, Translates written to ‘spoken’ (articulated).
sight processing in WM
SIGHT – PROCESSING IN VISUO-SPATIAL SKETCHPAD (VSS)
- images
- orientation
- navigation
- arithmetic ability
episodic buffer
- Integration of working memory components with long-term memory
- Very limited capacity
- Explains (?) (limited) ability of patients with no long-term memory to form very short memories
central executive
- The Boss
- Doesn’t actually do ‘the work’ (Perhaps no storage/holding capacity per se)
- Manages slave systems to prevent conflict and overload
- Lots of examples in everyday tasks (e.g. walking + texting, navigating car in unfamiliar area + listen to music)
schema
- Learned content can be retrieved as one chunk
- The more is learned, the bigger the ‘chunk’ (But it is still just one chunk)
- Is a simple example of how expertise develops
- Examples: Area codes, Times tables
selective attention - what is it
Ability to focus on a specific object, location, message or other stimulus
Limited ‘attentional resources’ to allocate
1. Complex/novel activities require more attention
2. Practice improves (becomes automatic)
3 MAIN ATTENTION SYSTEMS: PETERSEN AND POSNER 2012
alerting
orienting
executive
alerting system
- Subcortical
- Attends to danger/safety
- Tested by measuring vigilance (Tonic alerting - attention to low-frequency events)
Renewed attention after WW2, radar monitoring - Activated by ‘warnings’
- Thalamus/limbic system
- Recruits autonomic nervous system
- Also adrenergic system (locus coeruleus)
orienting system
- Attention to sensory location or modality (Watching TV, navigating traffic, catching a ball; Attending to relevant elements of warning)
- Ventral frontal cortex (Signals ‘new thing to attend to’)
- Temporo-parietal junction (Allows us to break attention on ‘old thing’)
- Pulvinar nucleus of thalamus (initial filtering)
executive system
- ‘Focal attention’ (concentration)
- Top-down control – select and concentrate, filter out others
- Two separate networks (?)
1. Fronto-parietal network (Task switching and initiation)
2. Cinguloopercular network (Maintenance)
what prompts us to attend
- ‘blind’ to gradual change
- Movement
- Lighting changes
- Emotional salience
SPE: PRIMARY AND RECENCY:
Generally, in a teaching episode, we remember
- The first things we hear/read/experience
- The last things we hear/read/experience
Generally, this seems to apply no matter what length the ‘episode’
- Beginning/end of a list
- Beginning/end of a lecture
- Beginning or end of a day
