ABSTRACT

Background: This study addresses two issues: Whether age-related differences in working memory (WM) can be studied in online samples, and whether such differences reflect an inhibitory deficit. Currently, the evidence is mixed, but the playing field was not level because traditional statistics cannot provide evidence for the null hypothesis.

Experiment 1: MTurk workers (ages 19–74) performed simple and complex visuospatial WM tasks to determine whether a secondary task affected the rate of age-related decline. Performance on both tasks replicated previous laboratory studies, establishing that age-related differences in WM can be studied online. Bayesian analyses revealed it is ten times as likely that there is no inhibitory deficit on visuospatial WM tasks as that there is.

Experiment 2: The effects of irrelevant location information on visuospatial WM were examined in older (M_age = 64.0) and younger (M_age = 25.0) MTurk workers. Irrelevant locations produced interference, but both groups were equally affected. Bayesian analyses provided support for the null hypothesis of no age difference.

Conclusions: The results of both experiments on working memory not only revealed equivalent visuospatial inhibitory function in older and younger adults, they also demonstrated that age-related differences in visuospatial WM can be effectively studied online as well as in the laboratory.

摘要

背景：这项研究解决了两个问题：是否可以在在线样本中研究与年龄相关的工作记忆 (WM) 差异，以及这些差异是否反映了抑制缺陷。目前，证据好坏参半，但竞争环境并不公平，因为传统统计数据无法为原假设提供证据。

实验 1：MTurk 工人（19-74 岁）执行简单和复杂的视觉空间 WM 任务，以确定次要任务是否影响与年龄相关的衰退率。这两项任务的表现复制了之前的实验室研究，确定了可以在线研究 WM 中与年龄相关的差异。贝叶斯分析表明，视觉空间 WM 任务没有抑制缺陷的可能性是实际情况的 10 倍。

实验 2 ：在年长（ M_年龄 = 64.0）和年轻（M_年龄 = 25.0）的 MTurk 工人中检查了无关位置信息对视觉空间 WM 的影响。不相关的位置会产生干扰，但两组都受到同样的影响。贝叶斯分析为没有年龄差异的零假设提供了支持。

结论: 两个工作记忆实验的结果不仅揭示了老年人和年轻人的视觉空间抑制功能相同，而且还证明了视觉空间 WM 与年龄相关的差异可以在网上和实验室中有效地研究。