Vermeent Stefan, Schubert Anna-Lena, DeJoseph Meriah L, Denissen Jaap J A, van Gelder Jean-Louis, Frankenhuis Willem E
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law, Freiburg, Germany.
R Soc Open Sci. 2025 Jan 8;12(1):241837. doi: 10.1098/rsos.241837. eCollection 2025 Jan.
Decades of research have shown that adversity tends to be associated with lower working memory (WM) performance. This literature has mainly focused on impairments in the capacity to hold information available in WM for further processing. However, some recent adaptation-based studies suggest that certain types of adversity can leave intact, or even enhance, the ability to rapidly update information in WM. One key challenge is that WM capacity and updating tasks tend to covary, as both types of tasks require the creation and maintenance of bindings in WM; links between mental representations of information in WM. To estimate the associations between adversity and different processes in WM, we need to isolate variance in performance related to WM capacity from variance in performance related to updating ability. In this Registered Report, participants from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel completed three WM tasks: two complex span tasks and a task measuring both binding and updating of information. In addition, we estimated participants' exposure to neighbourhood threat, material deprivation and unpredictability. We estimated associations between the three types of adversity and latent estimates of WM capacity and updating using structural equation modelling. We did not find consistent associations between adversity and WM capacity or updating, nor did we find evidence that the associations were practically equivalent to zero. Our results show that adversity researchers should account for overlap in WM tasks when estimating specific WM abilities.
数十年的研究表明，逆境往往与较低的工作记忆（WM）表现相关。该文献主要关注在WM中保持可供进一步处理的信息的能力受损情况。然而，一些近期基于适应的研究表明，某些类型的逆境可以使WM中快速更新信息的能力保持完好，甚至增强。一个关键挑战是，WM容量和更新任务往往相互关联，因为这两种类型的任务都需要在WM中创建和维持绑定；即WM中信息心理表征之间的联系。为了估计逆境与WM中不同过程之间的关联，我们需要将与WM容量相关的表现差异与与更新能力相关的表现差异区分开来。在这份注册报告中，来自荷兰社会科学纵向互联网研究（LISS）小组的参与者完成了三项WM任务：两项复杂广度任务以及一项测量信息绑定和更新的任务。此外，我们估计了参与者面临的邻里威胁、物质匮乏和不可预测性。我们使用结构方程模型估计了这三种逆境类型与WM容量和更新的潜在估计值之间的关联。我们没有发现逆境与WM容量或更新之间存在一致的关联，也没有发现证据表明这些关联实际上等同于零。我们的结果表明，逆境研究人员在估计特定的WM能力时应考虑WM任务中的重叠情况。
