Are There Age Differences in the Executive Component of Working Memory? Evidence from Domain-General Interference Effects

ABSTRACT

Young and older adults performed verbal and spatial storage-only and storage-plus-processing working memory tasks while performing a secondary finger tapping task, and the effects on both the maximum capacity (measured as the longest series correct) and the reliability (measured as the proportion of items correct) of working memory were assessed. Tapping tended to produce greater disruption of working memory tasks that place greater demands on executive processes (i.e., storage-plus-processing tasks compared to storage-only span tasks). Moreover, tapping produced domain-general interference, disrupting both verbal and spatial working memory, providing further support for the idea that tapping interferes with the executive component of the working memory system, rather than domain-specific maintenance processes. Nevertheless, tapping generally produced equivalent interference effects in young and older adults. Taken together, these findings are inconsistent with the hypothesis that age-related declines in working memory are primarily attributable to a deficit in the executive component.

Keywords:

• Working memory
• Short-term memory
• Aging
• Executive
• Dual-task
• Item-manipulation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging (grant R01-AG22448) and by a grant from the Pfeiffer Foundation to M. S. We would like to thank Brittany Scott for assistance in participant testing and data scoring and Meredith Minear for her help with the development of software.