Age-related deficits in top-down modulation underlie much of older adults' working memory impairment¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · reviewr3·q2
Currency · newest study 2012 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Older adults fail to gain WM benefits from predictive cues, show selective suppression deficits at early visual processing stages, and are disproportionately harmed by multitasking during maintenance. → Gazzaley A 2012
Evidence¶
Gazzaley A 2012¶
Gazzaley A, Nobre AC. (2012). Top-down modulation: Bridging selective attention and working memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.11.014
q2 · i? · review · r3
Box 1 review synthesis of cognitive aging studies. The review reports that "there is accumulating evidence that impaired selective attention processes in aging underlie much of the WM deficits experienced by older adults", including expectation deficits, suppression deficits, and poor disengagement from interruptions.
"there is accumulating evidence that impaired selective attention processes in aging underlie much of the WM deficits experienced by older adults"
Discussion¶
Learner Variables¶
- Attention — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
- Visual Processing — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
Related Claims¶
- Distraction during maintenance impairs working memory, with distractor processing inversely related to recognition accuracy — related
- Early (within ~100 ms) attentional modulation during encoding predicts subsequent working memory accuracy — related
- rTMS of right IFJ causally reduces top-down modulation during encoding and working memory accuracy — related
- Selective attention facilitates working memory retrieval, and selecting from WM resembles visual search — related
- Predictive cues aid transfer of perceptual representations into working memory via pre-encoding top-down modulation — a broader claim this one bears on
- Retro-cues during maintenance dynamically modulate working memory representations and confer large performance benefits — a broader claim this one bears on
- Cross-sectional advantages are largest for perception, multitasking, spatial cognition, and top-down attention — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
aging-top-down-modulation-deficit-wm |
title |
Age-related deficits in top-down modulation underlie much of older adults' working memory impairment |
description |
Age-related deficits in top-down modulation underlie much of older adults' working memory impairment |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2012 |
source_checked |
2026-10-20 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — gazzaley-a-2012 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.