The Inner Workings of Working Memory:The Effects of Aging and Language Impairment on Tasks Examining Verbal Working Memory

Wright et al. (2007) tested Persons with Aphasia (PWA) using three N-Back tasks featuring different types of linguistic information - phonological, semantic, and syntactic -- to determine whether Verbal Working Memory (VWM) is a single, united resource. The current study tested three PWA with the same tasks, as well as an additional vision-focused task, to expand on this previous research; two groups of cognitively normal individuals were tested using the same protocol to provide a baseline for comparison. Results from the unimpaired groups indicated no effects of aging, and significant differences in performance across all types of information except phonological and visual cues. Results from PWA were inconclusive. The N-Back task, however, was found to cause misleading patterns in accuracy scores for some tests; sensitivity scores are suggested as a better measure of performance on this testing paradigm