Biomedical subjects

Paola Palladino

Publications and source records attributed to Paola Palladino.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The role of interference control in working memory: a study with children at risk of ADHD.

The study aimed to test whether the impairment in a working memory task observed in children at risk of ADHD was due to a lack of control of interfering information being processed whilst carrying out the memory task. Two groups of children at risk of ADHD with or without a learning disability (reading impairment) were compared to a control group in a working memory task. Activation of irrelevant items was tested with a lexical decision task presented immediately after the final recall in about half of the trials. Results showed a poor working memory performance in children at risk of ADHD and reading disability associated with a larger activation of irrelevant information than that of control children. Results indicated that the to-be-excluded and interfering items are still highly accessible to working memory in children that fail the working memory task. The examination of working memory and interference control of children at risk of ADHD with a learning disability revealed a counterintuitive picture of children with poor working memory showing better recall/activation of processed information. This picture is consistent with a view of working memory related to an efficient inhibitory control that influences cognitive functioning.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗

PubMed2004

What happens to information to be suppressed in working-memory tasks? Short and long term effects.

The study explored, from an individual differences point of view, what happens to information to be suppressed in a working-memory task at short and long term. In particular, it was examined whether control mechanisms of irrelevant information in working memory imply their complete elimination from working memory or just the modulation of their activation. To this end, we compared the fate of irrelevant information in groups of subjects with high and low reading comprehension (Experiments 1 and 2) and subjects with high and low working memory (Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 4). All the experiments presented a working-memory task devised by De Beni, Palladino, Pazzaglia, and Cornoldi (1998), which required participants to process lists of words, to tap when a word from a particular category was presented, and then to recall only the last items in each list. Results confirmed that participants with high reading comprehension also have higher working memory and make less intrusion errors due to irrelevant items that have to be processed but then discarded. Furthermore, it was found that participants with low working memory have slightly better implicit (Experiment 1) and explicit memory (Experiments 3 and 4) of highly activated irrelevant information. Nevertheless, in a long-term recognition test, participants with high and low reading comprehension/working memory presented a similar pattern of memory for different types of irrelevant information (Experiment 2), whereas in a short-term memory recognition test, low-span participants presented a facilitation effect in the time required for the recognition of highly activated irrelevant information (Experiment 4). It was concluded that efficient working-memory performance is related to the temporary reduction of activation of irrelevant information but does not imply its elimination from memory.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Decline in working memory updating through ageing: intrusion error analyses.

The present research examines the decline in working memory updating through age. Two experiments compared groups of participants in different age ranges (young-old, 55-65 years, old, 66-75 years and old-old, more than 75 years and, in Experiment 2 only, young, 20-30 years). Memory updating tasks were administered, which required participants to remember the smallest items in each list. To perform the task correctly, participants had to update information efficiently, reducing interference from items no longer relevant. Intrusion errors were computed and in the first experiment these were described as "intrusions of irrelevant items" (immediate exclusion) and "intrusions of once relevant items" (delayed exclusion). The oldest adults performed worse in memory updating and made a greater number of intrusion errors of once relevant information. In the second experiment results showed that increases in memory load (number of items that had to be remembered) and updating demand (number of potentially relevant items) impaired performance. The oldest adults had greater difficulty when the task demand was increased. Furthermore, they produced a higher number of intrusion errors, particularly when the updating demand was increased. It therefore appears that elderly people have specific difficulty in updating information in working memory by excluding irrelevant information.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Reading comprehension and aging: does an age-related difference necessarily mean impairment?

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: This research investigated reading comprehension in groups of younger-old (55-69 years) and older-old (70-90 years) Italian adults to determine age-related differences and explore their extent. The second aim of our research was to investigate the nature of individual age-related differences and their relation to working memory and metacognition. METHODS: In Experiment 1,250 participants read two passages, a narrative and an expository text, and answered a series of multiple-choice inferential questions. In Experiment 2, three groups: younger-old good and poor comprehenders and older-old poor comprehenders were compared for working memory and metacognitive tasks. RESULTS: Although older-old adults had some difficulty compared with younger-old, a comparison with normative control scores (comprehension level achieved at the end of 8th grade compulsory education) showed that their reading comprehension of a narrative text was adequate, demonstrating basic comprehension skills for everyday life. Younger-old good comprehenders had higher working memory and metacognitive scores than younger-old poor comprehenders, consistent with results obtained in the literature with younger participants. Older-old adults had poorer working memory than younger-old poor comprehenders, although they did not differ in metacognitive performance. CONCLUSIONS: Results show that age differences influence the relationship between reading comprehension and memory and metacognition.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

When mental images are very detailed: image generation and memory performance as a function of age.

Older adults appear to have problems in mental imagery which seem to influence memory, such as in the recall of concrete words. However, the effects of imagery instruction on old participants' memory are quite inconsistent (Richardson, 1980; Salthouse, 1992). Two experiments explored the effects of aging on the nature of mental images generated from non-related nouns, and their memory. A sample of 234 participants, young (20-22 years) young-old (55-65 years), old (66-75 years) and old-old (>75 years), were recruited from universities and recreation centres. In Experiment 1 participants were required to generate mental images and describe them accurately in 40 s. Mental images were classified as general, specific-contextual and self-referred. Details were distinguished between relevant, information useful for describing a mental image and irrelevant, information which is not pertinent, or useful for describing a mental image. A final memory task was proposed. In Experiment 2 evocation and description time was manipulated in order to reduce the production of irrelevant detail: a shorter condition (evocation+description time=20 s) and a longer condition (evocation+description time=40 s). Results show that older adults produce a higher number of general and self-referred images but a lower number of specific images;report a greater quantity of irrelevant detail;recall a lower number of items. Decrease in evocation and description time reduced the irrelevant details and increased older adults' memory performance.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2003

Modality-specific effects in inhibitory mechanisms: the interaction of peripheral and central components in working memory.

Working memory is a complex system assumed to encompass both storage and processing components. At the same time, several authors have suggested the existence of separate peripheral modality-specific subsystems, in particular a verbal and a visuo-spatial mechanism. In the present research, we explored the hypothesis that modality-specific mechanisms may also operate in the central processing component. Inhibitory control has traditionally been considered as a typical function of the central executive, devoted to selecting, processing, and eliminating irrelevant information. We designed verbal and visuo-spatial tasks involving similar procedures and comparable levels of inhibitory control. Results indicate that accuracy profiles are similar in the two conditions; however, the patterns of data measuring inhibitory control, i.e., percentage of intrusion errors, are opposite in the case of verbal (intrusions decreased in more complex trials) and visuo-spatial (intrusions increased in more complex trials) material. These data are consistent with theoretical models of working memory suggesting that modality-specific effects emerge even in central processes and that both material-dependent and process-dependent features must be considered in working memory tasks.

Adult↗