<p>This paper presents verbal working memory test results towards establishing the effects of menstrual cycle on working memory of women. The study comprised of a subject-set of twenty healthy young women with a regular 28 – 32 day menstrual cycles. Subjects were tested twice, once during their menstrual phase and second during their ovulation phase (on approximately day 12). Working memory tests were performed in a random sequence i.e. for some subjects during the menstrual phase (low estrogen level) working memory test occurred before their ovulation phase (high estrogen level) memory test and vice versa for other subjects. Study revealed that the test scores in the ovulatory phase were significantly higher than those in the menstrual phase. These findings suggest that higher levels of estrogen may improve working memory. Moreover, effects of estrogen on mood were also considered during both phases of menstruation. The fluctuation in estrogen levels seems to have an effect on women’s mood during menstrual and ovulation phases.</p>

This paper presents verbal working memory test results towards establishing the effects of menstrual cycle on working memory of women. The study comprised of a subject-set of twenty healthy young women with a regular 28 – 32 day menstrual cycles. Subjects were tested twice, once during their menstrual phase and second during their ovulation phase (on approximately day 12). Working memory tests were performed in a random sequence i.e. for some subjects during the menstrual phase (low estrogen level) working memory test occurred before their ovulation phase (high estrogen level) memory test and vice versa for other subjects. Study revealed that the test scores in the ovulatory phase were significantly higher than those in the menstrual phase. These findings suggest that higher levels of estrogen may improve working memory. Moreover, effects of estrogen on mood were also considered during both phases of menstruation. The fluctuation in estrogen levels seems to have an effect on women’s mood during menstrual and ovulation phases.

The present study investigated the brain-behavior relationships between cerebellar vermal volume, phonological processing, and verbal working memory in children with Reading Disability (RD) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It was hypothesized that there would be differences in inferior posterior vermal volume between those with and without ADHD. Individuals with and without RD were not expected to differ in posterior inferior vermal volume and an interaction in the RD/ADHD group was expected. Children with RD/ADHD were expected to have similar volumes to children who have ADHD. It also was hypothesized that inferior posterior vermal volumes would be correlated with verbal working and phonological short-term memory; anterior vermal volumes were hypothesized to be correlated with elision, and superior posterior vermal volumes were hypothesized to be correlated with rapid object and rapid letter naming. Results indicated that there were no group differences in posterior inferior vermal volume between children with and without RD as well as with and without ADHD. There were also no relationships between phonological processing and verbal working memory. The findings in this study were unexpected and suggest the need for further study between phonological processing, verbal working memory, and vermal volume in children with ADHD and RD.

At the beginning of this work, recent studies had evidenced a tight link between serial order in verbal working memory and space processing. In a first study, we investigated the nature of this link. By discarding the possibility that it results from conceptual associations, our results favoured the idea that the representation of serial order is intrinsically of a spatial nature. This led us to hypothesize that a deficit of space processing should be accompanied by a deficit of serial order. To test this hypothesis, we investigated verbal working memory abilities in a group of brain-damaged patients with hemispatial neglect, a syndrome characterized by a deficit of spatial attention. We showed that these patients have a specific deficit for serial order, as they showed difficulties when judging the ordinal relations between memorized items, whereas they were able to judge the identity of these items. This deficit of serial order was related to hemispatial neglect severity and to posterior parietal lesions. We formulated the hypothesis that the link between serial order and space results from the overlap of brain networks subtending these cognitive processes, at the level of the posterior parietal cortex. To test this hypothesis, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily disrupt this area in healthy participants, with the prediction that TMS would induce a similar bias when judging the position of a landmark on horizontal lines (spatial task), and when judging the position of an item in memorized sequences (ordinal task). In line with previous studies, TMS induced a bias in the spatial task. However, contrary to our prediction, TMS over the same area in the same participants did not induce a similar bias in the ordinal task. / Doctorat en Sciences psychologiques et de l'éducation / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p dir="ltr">Spatial navigation is a complex skill that relies on many aspects of cognition. The following</p><p dir="ltr">studies aimed to clarify the role of working memory in spatial navigation, and particularly, the</p><p dir="ltr">potentially differential contributions of verbal and visuospatial working memory. Study 1</p><p dir="ltr">leveraged individual differences to understand how working memory differs among types of</p><p dir="ltr">navigators and the predictiveness of verbal and visuospatial working memory. Participants</p><p dir="ltr">completed multiple measures of verbal and visuospatial working memory and spatial navigation.</p><p dir="ltr">Study 2 further evaluated the impact of a working memory load on spatial navigation performance.</p><p dir="ltr">Using a dual-task paradigm, the decrement (or not) of performance on spatial navigation can be</p><p dir="ltr">compared between control, verbal, and visuospatial conditions. Study 1 showed that individual</p><p dir="ltr">differences in visuospatial working memory are more predictive than verbal working memory.</p><p dir="ltr">However, Study 2 provides evidence for the necessary role for both verbal and visuospatial</p><p dir="ltr">working memory.</p>

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Visual attentional capture is a form of visual attentional selection that is automatic and involuntary in nature, and is of high adaptive value as it allows visual attention to be oriented in a reflexive manner towards visual information without necessarily being guided by pre-existing knowledge, goals, and plans. According to the load-hypothesis (Lavie &amp; De Fockert, 2005), attentional capture of salient stimuli increases under load on working memory due to disruption of stimulus-processing priorities. Moreover, it has been proposed that maintenance of task-irrelevant verbal information increases distractor interference in singleton search by increasing attentional capture of salient, but task-irrelevant, color singletons. This hypothesis was tested in the present study by having participants complete several succeeding trials of singleton search while simultaneously maintaining digits in working memory. The presence of task-irrelevant color singletons in the search array of a singleton search task led to increased response times, indicating attentional capture. However, the cost to response times associated with distractor presence did not increase under load on working memory, indicating that distractor interference may not be affected by load on working memory when task-irrelevant verbal information is maintained over an extended period of time. Individual differences in action video game playing and trait anxiety were considered and excluded as possible confounders.

No description available.

No description available.

Anxiety disorders are among the most commonly diagnosed class of mental illness in the United States, and often involve abnormally high levels of stress and social fear. Despite high lifetime prevalence rates, social anxiety disorder (SAD) has remarkably low diagnosis and treatment rates. Furthermore, while individuals with other specific psychiatric disorders tend to exhibit significant neuropsychological deficits, neuropsychological functioning in individuals with SAD remains largely untested. A majority of the few existing studies concerning neuropsychological performance in SAD samples focus on specific functions, and their limited results are highly mixed. The primary objective of this investigation was to provide a more thorough, broad assessment of both auditory and visual working memory as related to psychometrically-defined social anxiety disorder. In addition, this study aimed to help clarify as to whether such deficits are related to the construct of social anxiety, or whether any potential deficits are better explained by generalized state and/or trait (in-the-moment) anxiety. The implications of a deficit in the visual and/or auditory working memory domains are multifaceted. For example, such a deficit may lead to the inability to detect visual cues in social situations. The inability to process these social cues has the potential to exacerbate some SAD- related symptoms, such as fear of humiliation and judgment. Twenty-nine college students completed both phases of this study, including an assessment of state and trait anxiety as well as social phobia and a four-part working memory battery. An analysis of the Phase II data indicates that individual scores on the four measures of both visual and auditory working memory did not relate to trait and/or state anxiety or psychometrically-defined social anxiety.; Thus, it appears that social, generalized trait, and generalized state anxiety do not relate to a neuropsychological deficit in either type of working memory in this sample population. However, we did find a statistical trend suggesting that as social anxiety increased, there was a relative decrease in visual vs. auditory working memory. This statistical trend remained after covarying for state and trait anxiety respectively. Therefore, future research in this area should examine the discrepancy in performance between the auditory and visual working memory domains as it relates to both diagnosed social phobia and psychometrically-defined social anxiety.