Oberauer K, Demmrich A, Mayr U, Kliegl R
Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Germany.
Mem Cognit. 2001 Jan;29(1):18-33. doi: 10.3758/bf03195737.
In two experiments, young and older adults solved arithmetic chain tasks with single-digit operands, with or without a concurrent memory load of three or six digits. Variables in the arithmetic tasks had to be replaced by digits from the screen or from the memory set. A task-irrelevant concurrent load impaired neither speed nor accuracy of arithmetic in younger adults. In Experiment 2, this was also true for older adults. A large decrease in arithmetic performance was observed, however, when variables in the arithmetic task had to be substituted by digits from the memory list. Older adults had specific problems with this condition in Experiment 1, where the substitution involved two successive steps, but not in Experiment 2, where the substitution from memory could be done in a single step. The results are difficult to reconcile with models assuming a common resource for storage and processing. Rather, they are compatible with the hypothesis that a concurrent memory load interferes with a processing task only during the points of access to working memory. Further, even though access to working memory was found to be the critical source of concurrent-load interference, it was found to be insensitive to the effects of adult aging.
在两项实验中，年轻人和老年人解决了个位数操作数的算术链任务，有或没有三或六位数字的并发记忆负荷。算术任务中的变量必须用屏幕上或记忆组中的数字来替换。与任务无关的并发负荷既不影响年轻人算术的速度也不影响其准确性。在实验2中，老年人也是如此。然而，当算术任务中的变量必须用记忆列表中的数字替换时，观察到算术表现大幅下降。在实验1中，老年人在这种情况下存在特定问题，其中替换涉及两个连续步骤，但在实验2中则不存在，在实验2中可以一步完成从记忆中的替换。这些结果很难与假设存储和处理使用共同资源的模型相协调。相反，它们与这样的假设相符，即并发记忆负荷仅在访问工作记忆的时刻干扰处理任务。此外，尽管发现访问工作记忆是并发负荷干扰的关键来源，但发现其对成年老化的影响不敏感。
