Gajewski Patrick D, Hanisch Eva, Falkenstein Michael, Thönes Sven, Wascher Edmund
Department of Ergonomics, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 26;9:2208. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02208. eCollection 2018.
Working memory (WM) declines with increasing age. The WM capacity is often measured by means of the computerized version of the -back task. Although the -back task is widely used in aging research, little is known about its construct validity and specific cognitive functions involved in this task. Moreover, to date, no studies analyzed the construct validity as a function of age. To this end, we conducted a study in a sample of = 533 individuals aged between 20 and 80 years. The sample was divided into three age groups: young (20-40), middle-aged (41-60), and old (61-80 years). A number of psychometric tests was selected that measure attention, memory, and executive control to elucidate the impact of these constructs on -back performance. A series of correlation analyses was conducted to assess the relationship between -back performance and specific cognitive functions in each age group separately. The results show a progressive increase in reaction times and a decrease in the proportion of detected targets from young to old subjects. Age-related impairments were also found in all psychometric tests except for the vocabulary choice test measuring crystallized intelligence. Most importantly, correlations yielded different age-related patterns of functions contributing to performance in the -back task: whereas performance was most related to executive functions in young age, a combination of attentional and executive processes was associated with performance in middle-aged subjects. In contrast, in older age, mainly attentional, verbal memory, and updating and to a lesser extent executive processes seem to play a crucial role in the -back task, suggesting a shift of processing strategies across the lifespan.
工作记忆（WM）会随着年龄的增长而衰退。工作记忆容量通常通过 - 回溯任务的计算机化版本来测量。尽管 - 回溯任务在衰老研究中被广泛使用，但对于其结构效度以及该任务所涉及的特定认知功能却知之甚少。此外，迄今为止，尚无研究分析结构效度随年龄的变化情况。为此，我们对533名年龄在20至80岁之间的个体进行了一项研究。样本被分为三个年龄组：青年组（20 - 40岁）、中年组（41 - 60岁）和老年组（61 - 80岁）。我们选择了一些心理测量测试来测量注意力、记忆力和执行控制能力，以阐明这些结构对 - 回溯任务表现的影响。我们分别对每个年龄组进行了一系列相关分析，以评估 - 回溯任务表现与特定认知功能之间的关系。结果显示，从青年到老年受试者，反应时间逐渐增加，检测到的目标比例逐渐下降。除了测量晶体智力的词汇选择测试外，在所有心理测量测试中都发现了与年龄相关的损伤。最重要的是，相关性分析得出了不同年龄组中对 - 回溯任务表现有贡献的功能的年龄相关模式：在青年时期，表现与执行功能最为相关；在中年受试者中，注意力和执行过程的组合与表现相关。相比之下，在老年时期，主要是注意力、言语记忆、更新以及在较小程度上的执行过程似乎在 - 回溯任务中起着关键作用，这表明在整个生命周期中处理策略发生了转变。
