Claims

VSTM performance declines with advancing adult age in raw error, item capacity, precision, and misbinding, even after adjusting for sensorimotor performance

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · associational r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2018 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2023: baselines and conditions change

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.

q3 i? Raw error magnitude significantly increased with age and K, precision, and misbinding all worsened with age across the adult life span. → Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 q3 i? Age-related declines remained for all memory measures after regressing out perceptual control (sensorimotor) performance. → Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 (2)

Evidence

Daniel J. Mitchell 2018

Daniel J. Mitchell, Cam-CAN (Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience), Rhodri Cusack. (2018). Visual Short-Term Memory Through the Lifespan: Preserved Benefits of Context and Metacognition. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000265

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Cross-sectional analysis of the Cam-CAN population-based sample of 649 participants aged 18 to 89 on a continuous color-report VSTM task. The article reports statistically significant age-related worsening of raw error and K with no printed effect size in this passage.

"Raw error magnitude significantly increased with age on average (see Figure 2e), and at all memory loads (see Figure 2a). K at each memory load reduced with age (see Figure 2b), but the relationship was weaker at lower loads due to a ceiling effect."

Daniel J. Mitchell 2018 (2)

Daniel J. Mitchell, Cam-CAN (Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience), Rhodri Cusack. (2018). Visual Short-Term Memory Through the Lifespan: Preserved Benefits of Context and Metacognition. Psychology and Aging. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000265

q3 · i? · associational · r3

Correlational analysis in which precision and K estimates from a no-memory perceptual control block were regressed out of every VSTM measure before recomputing age correlations. Declines persisted for all memory measures, indicating they are not attributable to poorer color perception or motor control.

"Importantly, age-related declines remained for all memory measures (see Figures 2i through 2l)."

Discussion

Page metadata
Field Value
type claim
id vstm-declines-with-age-all-measures
title VSTM performance declines with advancing adult age in raw error, item capacity, precision, and misbinding, even after adjusting for sensorimotor performance
description VSTM performance declines with advancing adult age in raw error, item capacity, precision, and misbinding, even after adjusting for sensorimotor performance
status review
evidence_strength moderate
newest_evidence 2018
recheck_by 2023
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 2 — daniel-j-mitchell-2018, daniel-j-mitchell-2018-2

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.