A solid understanding of basic mathematics is essential for many practical, everyday tasks and good mathematical skills are increasingly necessary in the workplace. For some, however, mathematics can evoke an adverse emotional reaction, increasingly recognised in both psychology and education as 'Mathematics Anxiety' (MA); nationally funded projects are currently undertaking research in this area. Studies show that MA can develop in early childhood and increase in intensity with age; this emphasises the importance of early intervention and educational psychologists are well-placed to promote and support this. Paper One details a systematic literature review evaluating the impact and effectiveness of interventions on the reduction of MA in school-aged children. Nine studies, published between 2010 and 2017, met inclusion criteria and were assessed using quality frameworks. Findings indicated that MA might be amenable to intervention in children aged between seven and eighteen years; potential factors contributing to effective amelioration were identified and discussed. In Paper Two, the relationship between MA and working memory (WM) is highlighted and explored. Having established a possible bi-directional relationship, a quasi-experimental, empirical study aimed to assess the potential benefits of WM training for reducing MA. A comparison group completed activities encompassing many of the potentially effective factors identified in Paper One. 50 children, aged between eight and nine years, participated in six-week long interventions. MA was measured through self-report and qualitative questionnaires; data were analysed quantitatively (using descriptive and inferential statistics) or qualitatively (using content analysis) respectively. Findings question the validity of self-report measures of MA in this age group and implications for effective intervention are considered. Paper Three provides an overview of the concepts of evidence-based practice and practice-based research in addition to considering current literature in relation to effective dissemination of research. Implications resulting from the current research are discussed alongside the proposed dissemination strategy.

Accurate memory for an object or event requires that multiple diverse features are bound together and retained as an integrated representation. There is overwhelming evidence that healthy ageing is accompanied by an associative deficit in that older adults struggle to remember relations between items above any deficit exhibited in remembering the items themselves. However, the effect of age on the ability to bind features within novel objects (for example, their colour and shape) and retain correct conjunctions over brief intervals is less clear. The relatively small body of work that exists on this topic to-date has suggested no additional working memory impairment for conjunctions of features beyond a general age-related impairment in the ability to temporarily retain features. This is in stark contrast to the feature binding deficit observed in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Nevertheless, there have been reports of age-related feature binding deficits in working memory under specific circumstances. Thus a major focus of the present work was to assess these potential boundary conditions. The change detection paradigm was used throughout this work to examine age-differences in visual working memory. Despite the popularity of this task important issues regarding the way in which working memory is probed have been left unaddressed. Chapter 2 reports three experiments with younger adults comparing two methods of testing recognition memory for features or conjunctions. Contrary to an influential study in the field, it appears that processing multiple items at test does not differentially impact on participants’ ability to detect binding changes. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 report a series of experiments motivated by previous findings of specific age-related feature binding deficits. These experiments, improving on previous methodology where possible, demonstrate that increasing the amount of time for which items can be studied (Chapter 3) or mixing feature-conjunction changes in trial-blocks with more salient changes to individual features (Chapters 4 and 5) does not differentially impact on healthy older adults’ ability to detect binding changes. Rather, the argument is made that specific procedural aspects of previous work led to the appearance of deficits that do not generalise. Chapter 5 also addresses the suggestion that healthy ageing specifically affects the retention of item-location conjunctions. The existing evidence for this claim is reviewed, and found wanting, and new data are presented providing evidence against it. To follow-up on the absence of a deficit for simple feature conjunctions, Chapter 6 contrasts two theoretically distinct binding mechanisms: one for features intrinsic to an object and another for extrinsic, contextual features. Preliminary evidence is reported that the cost associated with retaining pairings of features is specifically pronounced for older adults when the features are extrinsic to each other. In an attempt to separate out the contribution of working memory capacity and lapses of attention to age-differences in overall task performance, Chapter 7 reports the results of an exploratory analysis using processing models developed in Chapter 2. Analysis of two data sets from Chapters 4 and 5 demonstrates that lapses of attention make an important contribution to differences in change detection performance. Chapter 8 returns to the issue of measurement in assessing the evidence for specific age-related deficits. Simulations demonstrate that the choice of outcome measure can greatly affect conclusions regarding age-group by condition interactions, suggesting that some previous findings of such interactions in the literature may have been more apparent than real. In closing the General Discussion relates the present work to current theory regarding feature binding in visual working memory and to the wider literature on binding deficits in healthy and pathological ageing.

Goal maintenance is the ability to keep task rules active in-mind so that they can guide behaviour. When this process fails, individuals are unable to use task rules appropriately, and consequently perform poorly on the given task. The rate of goal neglect has been shown to increase with the complexity of the information to be maintained, especially for those with low levels of fluid intelligence. The main aim of this thesis was to examine whether this effect arises from the limited capacity for task rules, the limited ability to cope with competition between task rules, or the limited ability to sustain maintenance of a rule over time both in younger and older adults. A second aim was to investigate whether fluid intelligence and processing speed contribute to performance when goal maintenance is taxed. In particular, the number of instructions presented at the start of the task (Experiments 1-4), the speed at which rules had to be used (Experiment 5), the infrequency with which a task-relevant goal was used relative to a task-irrelevant goal (Experiment 6), and the duration for which rules had to be maintained (Experiment 7) were manipulated. Finally, the importance of goal maintenance in a more real-world setting was examined by testing the relationship between goal neglect and academic performance in children (Experiments 8 and 9). Goal maintenance was not limited by the number of rules to be held in mind, but goal neglect did increase as the degree of competition between rules and the duration with which they were maintained increased. Fluid intelligence accounted for little of the variation in goal maintenance abilities, but processing speed played a moderating role in older adults. In terms of academic performance, goal maintenance in school-aged children significantly predicted mathematics abilities, but not language.

Repeating a word or nonword requires a speaker to map auditory representations of incoming sounds onto learned speech items, maintain those items in short-term memory, interface that representation with the motor output system, and articulate the target sounds. This dissertation seeks to clarify the nature and neuroanatomical localization of speech sound representations in perception and production through multivariate analysis of neuroimaging data. The major portion of this dissertation describes two experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure responses to the perception and overt production of syllables and multivariate pattern analysis to localize brain areas containing associated phonological/phonetic information. The first experiment used a delayed repetition task to permit response estimation for auditory syllable presentation (input) and overt production (output) in individual trials. In input responses, clusters sensitive to vowel identity were found in left inferior frontal sulcus (IFs), while clusters responsive to syllable identity were found in left ventral premotor cortex and left mid superior temporal sulcus (STs). Output-linked responses revealed clusters of vowel information bilaterally in mid/posterior STs. The second experiment was designed to dissociate the phonological content of the auditory stimulus and vocal target. Subjects were visually presented with two (non)word syllables simultaneously, then aurally presented with one of the syllables. A visual cue informed subjects either to repeat the heard syllable (repeat trials) or produce the unheard, visually presented syllable (change trials). Results suggest both IFs and STs represent heard syllables; on change trials, representations in frontal areas, but not STs, are updated to reflect the vocal target. Vowel identity covaries with formant frequencies, inviting the question of whether lower-level, auditory representations can support vowel classification in fMRI. The final portion of this work describes a simulation study, in which artificial fMRI datasets were constructed to mimic the overall design of Experiment 1 with voxels assumed to contain either discrete (categorical) or analog (frequency-based) vowel representations. The accuracy of classification models was characterized by type of representation and the density and strength of responsive voxels. It was shown that classification is more sensitive to sparse, discrete representations than dense analog representations.

There is no consensus on the relationship between working memory resources and mind wandering. The purpose of the current study is to investigate whether mind wandering requires working memory resources to be sustained. The resource-demanding view is that mind wandering requires working memory resources to sustain an internal train of thought (Smallwood, 2010). The resource-free view is that mind wandering is a result of executive control failures and this internal train of thought proceeds in a resource-free manner (McVay & Kane, 2010). Participants were presented with thought probes while they performed a Simon task in single and dual task conditions. From the resource-demanding view, individuals with high WMC should experience more Task unrelated thought (TUT) in single and dual task conditions compared to those with low WMC. From the resource-free view, individuals with high WMC should experience fewer TUT compared to low WMC individuals. Results indicated that, WML eliminated the Simon effect for high WMC and reduced it for low WMC group. Mind wandering was decreased in dual task conditions however there was no effect of working memory capacity on mind wandering. Also, mind wandering correlated with task performance measures for the low WMC but not high WMC group. The results of the current study do not provide strong support for either a resource-demanding or resource-free view and are discussed in terms of a context dependent relationship between WMC and mind wandering

Emotional Stroop task results have been shown to be inconsistent throughout the literature due to a multitude of factors including both stimulus and population factors. There are also several theories to explain the emotional Stroop effects, including the attentional control theory (Eysenck et al., 2007). This theory states that anxiety consumes attentional and memory resources, resulting in impairment in executive functions, and thus cognitive performance is lowered. Recently, Owens et al. (2014) reported that the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance might be moderated by working memory capacity (WMC). The present study explored whether Owens et al.'s (2014) paradigm fit the Stroop data. It also explored the role that WMC had in recognition memory for emotional and neutral words. Processing efficiency during the Stroop task and anxiety was expected to show a positive relationship for High WMC and a negative relationship for Low WMC. Furthermore, memory for emotional words were expected to be better for Low WMC due to longer processing times for emotional words. The results showed that WMC did not improve the model for both the emotional Stroop and the surprise recognition memory task, thereby contradicting Owens et al.'s (2014) proposed paradigm. Furthermore, an increase of anxiety scores showed a decrease in memory for emotional words but only for Low WMC.

Many tasks rely on our ability to hold information about a stimulus in mind after it is no longer visible and to compare this information with incoming perceptual information. This ability relies on a short-term form of memory known as visual working memory. Research and theory at the behavioral and neural levels has begun to provide important insights into the basic properties of the neuro-cognitive systems underlying this form of memory. However, to date, no neurally-plausible theory has been proposed that addresses both the storage of information in working memory and the comparison process in a single framework. To address these limitations, I have developed a new model where working memory is realized via peaks of activation in dynamic neural fields, and comparison emerges as a result of interactions among the model's layers. In a series of simulations, I show how the model can be used to capture each of the components underlying performance in simple visual comparison tasks--from the encoding, consolidation, and maintenance of information in working memory, to comparison and updating in response to changed inputs. Importantly, the proposed model demonstrates how these elementary perceptual and cognitive functions emerge from the coordinated activity of an integrated, dynamic neural system. The model also makes novel predictions that were tested in a series of behavioral experiments. Specifically, when similar items are stored, shared lateral inhibition produces a sharpening of the peaks of activation associated with each item in memory. In the context of the model, this leads to the prediction that change detection will be enhanced for similar versus dissimilar features. This prediction was confirmed in a series of change detection experiments exploring memory for both color and orientation. In addition to sharpening, shared lateral inhibition among similar items produces mutual repulsion between nearby peaks. This leads to the prediction that when similar features are held, they will be systematically biased away from each other over delays. This prediction was confirmed in a cued color recall experiment comparing memory for a "far" color with memory for two "close" colors.

Cognitive research with human non-smokers has demonstrated that nicotine generally enhances performance on tasks of attention but, working memory does not appear to be affected. In contrast, nicotine has been shown to produce robust enhancements of working memory in non-human animals. To address this disparity, the present study investigated the effects of nicotine (2mg, 4mg nicotine gum, and placebo) on the performance of 30 non-smokers (15 male) completing a working memory task developed for rodents (the odor span task, OST). Nicotine has been reported to enhance OST performance in rodents and the present study sought to determine whether the effect is generalizable to human performance. In addition to completing the OST, participants completed a cognitive battery of clinical and experimental tasks assessing working memory and attention. This allowed for a direct comparison of OST performance to other commonly used measures of human cognition. Findings showed that nicotine was associated with dose dependent enhancements in sustained attention, as evidenced by increased hit accuracy on the rapid visual information processing (RVIP) task. However, nicotine failed to produce main effects on OST performance or on alternative measures of working memory (digit span, spatial span, letter-number sequencing, 2-back) or attention (digits forward, 0-back). Interestingly, enhancement of RVIP performance occurred concomitant to significant reductions in self-reported attention/concentration. Human OST performance was significantly related to N-back performance and, as in rodents, OST accuracy declined with increasing memory load. Given the similarity of human and rodent OST performance and the strong association observed between OST and visual 0-back accuracy, the OST may be particular useful for preclinical studies of conditions characterized by inattention.

The present study examined the direction and strength of the relation between three different areas academic achievement and working memory with adolescent students. The data analyzed included ratings for inattention, a diagnosis of ADHD (or not), and demographic information for race/ethnicity. Fifty children aged 11 to16 years of age participated in the study. Participants were recruited from several middle schools, homeschooling networks, and churches from a southeastern state of the United States. Each participant completed a standardized achievement test, a behavioral rating scale, and visual and verbal working memory tests. The research questions investigated: 1) the relation between visual and verbal working memory with each of three areas of academic achievement; 2) whether the relation between visual and verbal working memory was strengthened or moderated by inattention. Results found that verbal-auditory working memory (p=p=p=.01). There was a positive relation between the working memory scores and academic achievement, with higher working memory scores predicting higher academic achievement. Due to significant differences with the standardized testing scores between Caucasians and non-Caucasians, the analysis was controlled for ethnicity. The measure of inattention problems did not add significantly to or moderate the prediction of academic achievement by visual or verbal working memory after controlling for ethnicity. Future recommendations included research to support students with low working memory skills and to examine the cultural sensitivity of the working memory batteries.

Segmentational grouping in music listening refers to the organisation of individual tones into tone groups that tend to be processed and subsequently recalled as perceptual units or chunks. Grouping of tones via this process tends to occur at natural breaks in structure of a tone sequence, so that relatively larger changes in pitch, amplitude or timing are perceived as boundaries which cue the segmentational grouping process. Segmentational grouping processes have been examined using behavioural research techniques; yet neurophysiological processes underlying the grouping process have received little attention, and are poorly understood. This study aimed to identify brain regions involved in the segmentational grouping process as cued by rhythmic information. Participants performed two auditory tasks while brain electrical activity responses were monitored using Steady-State Probe Topography (SSPT). Behavioural responses evoked in a task probing individuals' use of lengthened-duration tones to organise memory for pitch sequences indicated that longer-duration tones were used as cues to organise working memory representations of the musical patterns. Examination of dynamic SSPT responses during the encoding phase of a probe recognition task indicated that greater use of rhythmic cues to organise working memory representations was associated with activation of a network of left hemisphere frontal, temporal and parietal regions. During the lengthened tone, activation of left central and vertex regions and progressive activation of left temporal and temporoparietal regions were linked with use of the deviant status of the lengthened tone to update temporal expectations for the sequence. Excitatory responses observed in left posterior frontal and temporal regions to a tone following the lengthened tone were proposed to reflect temporal allocation of attention to this point in time, whereas sustained excitatory activation of left temporal, and temporoparietal regions reflected the role of these regions in supporting representations of the tone events in working memory. Finally, late inhibitory responses to the tone following the lengthened tone in left frontal, temporal, temporoparietal, and parietal regions were linked with the manipulation and closure of the working memory trace in association with the grouping process. Together, these findings support the activation of a network of left frontal, temporal and parietal regions underlying rhythmic grouping of pitch sequences.