Comparable mechanisms of working memory interference by auditory and visual motion in youth and aging

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:51

Article

Mishra, Jyoti¹  Zanto, Theodore¹  Nilakantan, Aneesha¹  Gazzaley, Adam¹ 

[1] Univ Calif San Francisco, Sandler Neurosci Ctr, Dept Neurol Physiol & Psychiat, San Francisco, CA 94158 USA

关键词: Working memory;    Auditory;    Visual;    Motion;    Aging;    Alpha oscillations;    Distraction;    Interference;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.06.011

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Intrasensory interference during visual working memory (WM) maintenance by object stimuli (such as faces and scenes), has been shown to negatively impact WM performance, with greater detrimental impacts of interference observed in aging. Here we assessed age-related impacts by intrasensory WM interference from lower-level stimulus features such as visual and auditory motion stimuli. We consistently found that interference in the form of ignored distractions and secondary task interruptions presented during a WM maintenance period, degraded memory accuracy in both the visual and auditory domain. However, in contrast to prior studies assessing WM for visual object stimuli, feature-based interference effects were not observed to be significantly greater in older adults. Analyses of neural oscillations in the alpha frequency band further revealed preserved mechanisms of interference processing in terms of post-stimulus alpha suppression, which was observed maximally for secondary task interruptions in visual and auditory modalities in both younger and older adults. These results suggest that age-related sensitivity of WM to interference may be limited to complex object stimuli, at least at low WM loads. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free