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The roles of attention, executive function and knowledge in cognitive ageing of working memory

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 2, pages 151–165 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Working memory is an ensemble of components that temporarily hold information in a heightened state of availability for use in ongoing information processing. Working memory is crucial for everyday behaviours such as remembering names and faces, following recipes, remembering the gist of a conversation, and making decisions based on multiple factors. In this Review, we examine how working memory relates to other aspects of information processing to understand age-related decline in working memory. We first contrast several theoretical approaches to working memory. We then discuss benchmark behavioural findings on working memory during ageing and describe general underlying mechanisms that might explain age-related declines and stability. In particular, we emphasize how attention and executive function interact with knowledge. Finally, we assess the relevance of these findings for theories of working memory. Even as executive functions decrease in efficiency with age, some basic attention functions and preserved knowledge can help to blunt the effects of ageing on working memory.

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Fig. 1: Use of executive function and knowledge in a simple working memory task.
Fig. 2: Three-legged stool metaphor for working memory in ageing.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank F. Craik for extensive help in writing this Review, and N. Greene for help with the citations and the references.

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    Moshe Naveh-Benjamin & Nelson Cowan

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Naveh-Benjamin, M., Cowan, N. The roles of attention, executive function and knowledge in cognitive ageing of working memory. Nat Rev Psychol 2, 151–165 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00149-0

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