A growing number of studies have investigated how motivation interacts with particular cognitive functions, including attention, working memory, and other executive functions. In these studies, the emphasis has been on understanding how motivation impacts brain regions that contribute to improving behavioral performance. Less is understood about…

During sentence comprehension, older adults are less likely than younger adults to predict features of likely upcoming words. A pair of experiments assessed whether such differences would extend to tasks with reduced working memory demands and time pressures. In Experiment 1, event-related brain potentials were measured as younger and older adults…

Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or…

This article reviews research on working memory (WM) and its use in second language (L2) acquisition research. Recent developments in the model and issues surrounding the operationalization of the construct itself are presented, followed by a discussion of various methods of measuring WM. These methods include word and digit span tasks, reading,…

Mnemonic deficits in patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage arising from temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) are traditionally constrained to long-term episodic memory, sparing short-term and working memory (WM). This view of WM as being independent of MTL structures has recently been challenged by a small number of patient and neuroimaging…

Mammillary body atrophy is present in a number of neurological conditions and recent clinical findings highlight the importance of these nuclei for memory. While most accounts of diencephalic amnesia emphasize the functional importance of the hippocampal projections to the mammillary bodies, the present study tested the importance of the other…

This study investigated the construction of a spatial model in relation to working memory (WM) and visuospatial abilities. Participants were trained to use either imagery or verbal strategies to process route spatial texts. Results obtained on a free recall task, a verification test and a graphic representation task showed the beneficial effect of…

The authors show that the updating of working memory (WM) representations is carried out by the cooperative act of 2 dissociable reaction time (RT) components: a global updating process that provides stability by shielding WM contents against interference and a local process that provides flexibility. Participants kept track of 1?3 items (digits…

Background: Efficient memory functions are important to the development of cognitive and functional skills, allowing individuals to manipulate and store information. Theories of memory have suggested the presence of domain-specific (i.e. verbal and spatial) and general processing mechanisms across memory domains, including memory functions…

Aim: Basic verbal and academic skills can be adversely affected by early-onset diabetes, although these skills have been studied less than other cognitive functions. This study aimed to explore the mechanism of learning deficits in children with diabetes by assessing basic verbal and academic skills in children with early-onset diabetes and in…

This study identified age differences in time-based prospective memory performance in school-aged children and explored possible cognitive correlates of age-related performance. A total of 56 7- to 12-year-olds performed a prospective memory task in which prospective memory accuracy, ongoing task performance, and time monitoring were assessed.…

Disruption of cerebral white matter has been proposed as an explanation for age-related cognitive declines. However, the role of specific regions in specific cognitive declines remains unclear. We used diffusion tensor imaging to examine the associations between regional microstructural integrity of the white matter and performance on…

Some second language (L2) learners return from study-abroad experiences (SAEs) with seemingly no change in their L2 ability. In this study we investigate whether a certain level of internal cognitive resources is necessary in order for individuals to take full advantage of the SAE. Specifically, we examine the role of working memory resources in…

To explore the possible neural foundations of individual differences in intelligence test scores, we examined the associations between Raven's Matrices scores and two tasks that were administered in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) setting. The two tasks were an n-back working memory (N = 37) task and inspection time (N = 47). The…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…