Changes in the organisation of working memory processes across the adult lifespan: behavioural and electrophysiological evidence

In young adulthood working memory processes have been found to form highly differentiated pools of cognitive resource However, it is not yet known whether this organisation changes across the adult lifespan. The proposed study will adopt an integrated behavioural and electrophysiological methodology to examine whether working memory processes dedifferentiate into a general pool of cognitive resource, or whether they remain highly differentiated, with increased age. Nine memory tasks have been designed for this purpose, three verbal, three visual and three spatial. The reliability and validity of each of these tasks will be evaluated in Experiment One. Experiment Two will examine the nature of change in verbal, visual and spatial memory across the adult life span. Structural equation modelling will be used at this stage to determine whether a multicomponent model of working memory fits the data equally well for young and older adults. Experiment three involves recording ERPs while participants are performing the different memory tasks. This integrated approach will enable some of the discrepancies between behavioural and neurophysiological data to be clarified. It will also provide valuable information about working memory and ageing