{"title":"The Effect of Mental Fatigue and Gender on Working Memory Performance during Repeated Practice by Young and Older Adults.","authors":"Valentina Pergher, Nele Vanbilsen, Marc Van Hulle","doi":"10.1155/2021/6612805","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory (WM) is one of the most investigated cognitive functions albeit the extent to which individual characteristics impact on performance is still unclear, especially when older adults are involved. The present study considers repeated practice of a visual <i>N</i>-Back task with three difficulty levels (1-, 2-, and 3-Back) in healthy young and older individuals. Our results reveal that, for both age groups, the expected mental fatigue was countered by a learning effect, in terms of accuracies and reaction times, which turned out to benefit females more than males, for all three <i>N</i>-Back levels. We conclude that future WM studies, in particular when relying on repeated <i>N</i>-Back sessions, should account for learning effects in relation to mental fatigue and gender, in both young and older adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":3,"journal":{"name":"ACS Applied Electronic Materials","volume":" ","pages":"6612805"},"PeriodicalIF":4.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8505107/pdf/","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACS Applied Electronic Materials","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6612805","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Working memory (WM) is one of the most investigated cognitive functions albeit the extent to which individual characteristics impact on performance is still unclear, especially when older adults are involved. The present study considers repeated practice of a visual N-Back task with three difficulty levels (1-, 2-, and 3-Back) in healthy young and older individuals. Our results reveal that, for both age groups, the expected mental fatigue was countered by a learning effect, in terms of accuracies and reaction times, which turned out to benefit females more than males, for all three N-Back levels. We conclude that future WM studies, in particular when relying on repeated N-Back sessions, should account for learning effects in relation to mental fatigue and gender, in both young and older adults.
期刊介绍:
ACS Applied Electronic Materials is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research covering all aspects of electronic materials. The journal is devoted to reports of new and original experimental and theoretical research of an applied nature that integrate knowledge in the areas of materials science, engineering, optics, physics, and chemistry into important applications of electronic materials. Sample research topics that span the journal's scope are inorganic, organic, ionic and polymeric materials with properties that include conducting, semiconducting, superconducting, insulating, dielectric, magnetic, optoelectronic, piezoelectric, ferroelectric and thermoelectric.
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