The concurrent validity of the N-back task as a working memory measure

Memory

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 394-412

  Jaeggi, Susanne M ^a   Buschkuehl, Martin ^a   Perrig, Walter J ^b   Meier, Beat ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BERN   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

Executive functions; Intelligence; Inter individual differences; Reliability; Validity

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ARTICLE; ATTENTION; EXECUTIVE FUNCTION; FEMALE; HUMAN; INDIVIDUALITY; INTELLIGENCE; LEARNING; LONG TERM MEMORY; MALE; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TEST; PATTERN RECOGNITION; PSYCHOMETRY; REACTION TIME; READING; REPRODUCIBILITY; SHORT TERM MEMORY; SPEECH PERCEPTION; STATISTICS;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ASSOCIATION LEARNING; ATTENTION; EXECUTIVE FUNCTION; FEMALE; HUMANS; INDIVIDUALITY; INTELLIGENCE; MALE; MEMORY, SHORT-TERM; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; PATTERN RECOGNITION, VISUAL; PSYCHOMETRICS; REACTION TIME; READING; REPRODUCIBILITY OF RESULTS; RETENTION (PSYCHOLOGY); SERIAL LEARNING; SPEECH PERCEPTION; VERBAL LEARNING; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 77952629561     PISSN: 09658211     EISSN: 14640686     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09658211003702171     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Ackerman, P. L., Beier, M. E., & Boyle, M. O. (2005). Working memory and intelligence: The same or different constructs? Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 30-60.
2. Awh, E., Jonides, J., Smith, E. E., Schumacher, E. H., Koeppe, R. A., & Katz, S. (1996). Dissociation of storage and rehearsal in verbal working memory: Evidence from positron emission tomography. Psychological Science, 7(1), 25-31.
3. Bryan, J., & Luszcz, M. A. (2000). Measurement of executive function: Considerations for detecting adult age differences. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 22(1), 40-55.
4. Bryan, J., & Luszcz, M. A. (2001). Adult age differences in self-ordered pointing task performance: Contributions from working memory, executive function and speed of information processing. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 23(5),608-619.
5. Carroll, J. B. (1993). Human cognitive abilities. A survey of factor-analytic studies. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
6. Ciesielski, K. T., Lesnik, P. G., Savoy, R. L., Grant, E. P., & Ahlfors, S. P. (2006). Developmental neural networks in children performing a categorical N-back task. Neuroimage, 33(3), 980-990.
7. Colom, R., Abad, F. J., Quiroga, M. Á., Shih, P. C., & Flores-Mendoza, C. (2008). Working memory and intelligence are highly related constructs, but why? Intelligence, 36, 584-606.
8. Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., Bunting, M. F., Hambrick, D. Z., Wilhelm, O., & Engle, R. W. (2005). Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user's guide. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(5), 769-786.
9. Conway, A. R. A., Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2003). Working memory capacity and its relation to general intelligence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(12), 547-552.
10. Cowan, N. (2001). The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capa city. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(1), 87-185.
11. Cowan, N., Elliott, E. M., Saults, J. S., Morey, C. C., Mattox, S., Hismjatullina, A., et al. (2005). On the capacity of attention: Its estimation and its role in working memory and cognitive aptitudes. Cognitive Psychology, 51, 42-100.
12. Daigneault, S., & Braun, C. M. (1993). Working memory and the Self-Ordered Pointing Task: Further evidence of early prefrontal decline in normal aging. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 15(6), 881-895.
13. Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 450-466.
14. Dobbs, A. R., & Rule, B. G. (1989). Adult age differences in working memory. Psychology and Aging, 4(4), 500-503.
15. Drobyshevsky, A., Baumann, S. B., & Schneider, W. (2006). A rapid fMRI task battery for mapping of 410 JAEGGI ET AL. visual, motor, cognitive, and emotional function. Neuroimage, 31(2), 732-744.
16. Duncan, J., Seitz, R. J., Kolodny, J., Bor, D., Herzog, H., Ahmed, A., et al. (2000). A neural basis for general intelligence. Science, 289(5478), 457-460.
17. Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R. A. (1999). Working memory, short- term memory, and general fluid intelligence: A latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(3), 309-331.
18. Fogarty, G., & Stankov, L. (1982). Competing tasks as an index of intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 3, 407-422.
19. Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2005). Comparison of four scoring methods for the reading span test. Behavior Research Methods, 37(4), 581-590.
20. Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Corley, R. P., Young, S. E., Defries, J. C., & Hewitt, J. K. (2006). Not all executive functions are related to intelligence. Psychological Science, 17(2), 172-179.
21. Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Young, S. E., Defries, J. C., Corley, R. P., & Hewitt, J. K. (2008). Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(2), 201-225.
22. Gevins, A., & Smith, M. E. (2000). Neurophysiological measures of working memory and individual differences in cognitive ability and cognitive style. Cere-bral Cortex, 10, 829-839.
23. Gevins, A. S., Bressler, S. L., Cutillo, B. A., Illes, J., Miller, J. C., Stern, J., et al. (1990). Effects of prolonged mental work on functional brain topography. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 76(4), 339-350.
24. Gray, J. R., Chabris, C. F., & Braver, T. S. (2003). Neural mechanisms of general fluid intelligence. Nature Neuroscience, 6(3), 316-322.
25. Gregoire, J., & Van der Linden, M. (1997). Effects of age on forward and backward digit spans. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 4, 140-149.
26. Hockey, A., & Geffen, G. (2004). The concurrent validity and test retest reliability of a visuospatial working memory task. Intelligence, 32, 591-605.
27. Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Etienne, A., Ozdoba, C., Perrig, W. J., & Nirkko, A. C. (2007). On how high performers keep cool brains in situations of cognitive overload. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 7(2), 75-89.
28. Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829-6833.
29. Jaeggi, S. M., Schmid, C., Buschkuehl, M., & Perrig, W. J. (2009). Differential age effects in load-dependent memory processing. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 16, 80-102.
30. Jarrold, C., & Towse, J. N. (2006). Individual differences in working memory. Neuroscience, 139(1), 39-50.
31. Jonides, J., Schumacher, E. H., Smith, E. E., Lauber, E. J., Awh, E., Minoshima, S., et al. (1997). Verbal working memory load affects regional brain activation as measured by PET. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(4), 462-475.
32. Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension. Psychological Review, 99, 122-149.
33. Kane, M. J. (2005). Full frontal fluidity? Looking in on the neuroimaging of reasoning and intelligence. In O. Wilhelm & R. W. Engle (Eds.), Handbook of understanding and measuring intelligence (pp. 141-163). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
34. Kane, M. J., Conway, A. R. A., Miura, T. K., & Colflesh, G. J. (2007). Working memory, attention control, and the N-back task: A question of construct validity. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(3), 615-622.
35. Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2002). The role of prefrontal cortex in working-memory capacity, ex-ecutive attention, and general fluid intelligence: An individual-differences perspective. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(4), 637-671.
36. Kane, M. J., Hambrick, D. Z., & Conway, A. R. (2005). Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are strongly related constructs: Comment on Ackermann, Beier, and Boyle (2005). Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 66-71.
37. Kane, M. J., Hambrick, D. Z., Tuholski, S. W., Wilhelm, O., Payne, T. W., & Engle, R. W. (2004). The generality of working memory capacity: A latent-variable approach to verbal and visuospatial memory span and reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133(2), 189-217.
38. Kirchner, W. K. (1958). Age differences in short-term retention of rapidly changing information. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55(4), 352-358.
39. Knops, A., Nuerk, H. C., Fimm, B., Vohn, R., & Willmes, K. (2006). A special role for numbers in working memory? An fMRI study. Neuroimage, 29(1),1-14.
40. Kyllonen, P. C., & Christal, R. E. (1990). Reasoning ability is (little more than) working-memory capacity?! Intelligence, 14, 389-433.
41. Lehmann, C., Mueller, T., Federspiel, A., Hubl, D., Schroth, G., Huber, O., et al. (2004). Dissociation between overt and unconscious face processing in fusiform face area. Neuroimage, 21(1), 75-83.
42. MacDonald, M. C., & Christiansen, M. H. (2002). Reassessing working memory: Comment on Just and Carpenter (1992) and Waters and Caplan (1996). Psychological Review, 109(1),35-54; discussion 55-74.
43. Mackworth, J. F. (1959). Paced memorizing in a continuous task. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(3), 206-211.
44. McElree, B. (2001). Working memory and focal attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(3), 817-835.
45. Meier, B., & Perrig, W. J. (2000). Low reliability of perceptual priming: Consequences for the interpretation of functional dissociations between explicit and implicit memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A: Human Experimental Psy-chology, 53(1), 211-233.
46. Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "frontal lobe" tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1),49-100.
47. Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Rettinger, D. A., Shah, P., & Hegarty, M. (2001). How are visuospatial working memory, executive functioning, and spatial abilities related? A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130(4),621-640.
48. Nystrom, L. E., Braver, T. S., Sabb, F. W., Delgado, M. R., Noll, D. C., & Cohen, J. D. (2000). Working memory for letters, shapes, and locations: fMRI evidence against stimulus-based regional organization in human prefrontal cortex. Neuroimage, 11(5 Pt 1), 424-446.
49. Oberauer, K. (2005). Binding and inhibition in working memory: Individual and age differences in short-term recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134(3), 368-387.
50. Oberauer, K., Lange, E., & Engle, R. W. (2004). Working memory capacity and resistance to interference. Journal of Memory and Language, 51(1), 80-96.
51. Oberauer, K., Schulze, R., Wilhelm, O., & Suss, H. M. (2005). Working memory and intelligence their correlation and their relation: Comment on Ackerman, Beier, and Boyle (2005). Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 61-65.
52. Owen, A. M., McMillan, K. M., Laird, A. R., & Bullmore, E. (2005). N-back working memory paradigm: A meta-analysis of normative functional neuroimaging studies. Human Brain Mapping, 25(1),46-59.
53. Petrides, M., & Milner, B. (1982). Deficits on subject-ordered tasks after frontal and temporal-lobe lesions in man. Neuropsychologia, 20, 249-262.
54. Ragland, J. D., Turetsky, B. I., Gur, R. C., Gunning Dixon, F., Turner, T., Schroeder, L., et al. (2002). Working memory for complex figures: An fMRI comparison of letter and fractal n-back tasks. Neuropsychology, 16(3), 370-379.
55. Raven, J. C. (1990). Advanced Progressive Matrices. Sets I, II. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
56. Roberts, R., & Gibson, E. (2002). Individual differences in sentence memory. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31(6), 573-598.
57. Salthouse, T. A., Atkinson, T. M., & Berish, D. E. (2003). Executive functioning as a potential mediator of age-related cognitive decline in normal adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132(4),566-594.
58. Salthouse, T. A., Pink, J. E., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2008). Contextual analysis of fluid intelligence. Intelligence, 36, 464-486.
59. Schumacher, E. H., Lauber, E., Awh, E., Jonides, J., Smith, E. E., & Koeppe, R. A. (1996). PETevidence for an amodal verbal working memory system. Neuroimage, 3(2), 79-88.
60. Shamosh, N. A., Deyoung, C. G., Green, A. E., Reis, D. L., Johnson, M. R., Conway, A. R., et al. (2008).Individual differences in delay discounting: Relation to intelligence, working memory, and anterior prefrontal cortex. Psychological Science, 19(9), 904-911.
61. Shelton, J. T., Elliott, E. M., Hill, B. D., Calamia, M. R., & Gouvier, W. D. (2009). A comparison of laboratory and clinical working memory tests and their prediction of fluid intelligence. Intelligence, 37, 283-293.
62. Shelton, J. T., Metzger, R. L., & Elliott, E. M. (2007). A group-administered lag task as a measure of working memory. Behavior Research Methods, 39(3), 482-493.
63. Smith, E. E., & Jonides, J. (1997). Working memory: A view from neuroimaging. Cognitive Psychology, 33(1),5-42.
64. Smith, E. E., & Jonides, J. (1998). Neuroimaging analyses of human working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 95(20), 12061-12068.
65. Snodgrass, J. G., & Corwin, J. (1988). Pragmatics of measuring recognition memory: Applications to dementia and amnesia. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117(1), 34-50.
66. Spilsbury, G. (1992). Complexity as a reflection of the dimensionality of a task. Intelligence, 16, 31-45.
67. Stankov, L., & Crawford, J. D. (1993). Ingredients of complexity in fluid intelligence. Learning and Individual Differences, 5, 73-111.
68. Stuss, D. T., Alexander, M. P., Floden, D., Binns, M. A., Levine, B., McIntosh, A. R., et al. (2002). Fractionation and localization of distinct frontal lobe processes: Evidence from focal lesions in umans. In D. T. Stuss & R. T. Knight (Eds.), Principles of frontal lobe function (pp. 392-407). New York: Oxford University Press.
69. Suss, H-M., Oberauer, K., Wittmann, W. W., Willhelm, O., & Schulze, R. (2002). Working-memory capacity explains reasoning ability and a little bit more. Intelligence, 30(3), 261-288.
70. Tewes, U. (1991). Hamburg-Wechsler-Intelligenztest fur Erwachsene-Revision 1991 (HAWIE-R). Bern: Hans Huber.
71. Van Leeuwen, M., Van den Berg, S. M., Hoekstra, R. A., & Boomsma, D. I. (2007). Endophenotypes for intelligence in children and adolescents. Intelligence, 35,369-380.
72. Verhaeghen, P., & Basak, C. (2005). Ageing and switching of the focus of attention in working memory: Results from a modified N-back task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, 58(1), 134-154.
73. Verhaeghen, P., Cerella, J., & Basak, C. (2004). A working memory workout: How to expand the focus of serial attention from one to four items in 10 hours or less. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(6),1322-1337.
74. Wager, T. D., & Smith, E. E. (2003). Neuroimaging studies of working memory: A meta-analysis. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 3(4),255-274.
75. Waiter, G. D., Deary, I. J., Staff, R. T., Murray, A. D., Fox, H. C., Starr, J. M., et al. (2009). Exploring possible neural mechanisms of intelligence differences using processing speed and working memory tasks: An fMRI study. Intelligence, 37, 199-206.
76. Wechsler, D. (1981). WAIS-R Manual. New York: ThePsychological Corporation.
77. Whitney, P., Arnett, P. A., Driver, A., & Budd, D. (2001). Measuring central executive functioning: What's in a reading pan? Brain and Cognition, 45(1),1-14.