Exploring techniques for encoding spoken instructions in working memory: a comparison of verbal rehearsal, motor imagery, self-enactment and action observation.

Encoding and recalling spoken instructions is subject to working memory capacity limits. Previous research suggests action-based encoding facilitates instruction recall, but has not directly compared benefits across different types of action-based techniques. The current study addressed this in two experiments with young adults. In Experiment 1, participants listened to instructional sequences containing four action-object pairs, and encoded these instructions using either a motor imagery or verbal rehearsal technique, followed by recall via oral repetition or enactment. Memory for instructions was better when participants used a motor imagery technique during encoding, and when recalling the instructions by enactment. The advantage of using a motor imagery technique was present in both verbal and enacted recall. In Experiment 2, participants encoded spoken instructions whilst implementing one of four techniques (verbal rehearsal, motor imagery, observation of others' actions or self-enactment), and then recalled the instructions by oral repetition or enactment. For both verbal and enacted recall, memory for instructions was least accurate in the rehearsal condition, while the other encoding conditions did not differ from each other. These novel findings indicate similar benefits of imagining, observation and execution of actions in encoding spoken instructions, and enrich current understanding of action-based benefits in working memory.

Educational achievement to age 11 years in children born at late preterm and early term gestations.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of being born late preterm (LPT, 34-36 weeks' gestation) or early term (37-38 weeks) on children's educational achievement between ages 5 and 11 years. DESIGN: A series of observational studies of longitudinal linked health and education data. SETTING: The Born-in-Bradford (BiB) birth cohort study, which recruited mothers during pregnancy between 2007 and 2011. PARTICIPANTS: The participants are children born between 2007 and 2011. Children with missing data, looked-after-children, multiple births and births post-term were excluded. The sample size varies by age according to amount of missing data, from 7860 children at age 5 years to 2386 at age 11 years (8031 at age 6 years and 5560 at age 7 years). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Binary variables of whether a child reached the 'expected' level of overall educational achievement across subjects at the ages of 5, 6, 7 and 11 years. The achievement levels are measured using standardised teacher assessments and national tests. RESULTS: Compared with full-term births (39-41 weeks), there were significantly increased adjusted odds of children born LPT, but not early term, of failing to achieve expected levels of overall educational achievement at ages 5 years (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.72,95% CI 1.34 to 2.21) and 7 years (aOR 1.46, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.97) but not at age 11 years (aOR 1.51, 95% CI 0.99 to 2.30). Being born LPT still had statistically significant effects on writing and mathematics at age 11 years. CONCLUSIONS: There is a strong association between LPT and education at age 5 years, which remains strong and statistically significant through age 11 years for mathematics but not for other key subjects.

Socioeconomic disadvantage and ethnicity are associated with large differences in children's working memory ability: analysis of a prospective birth cohort study following 13,500 children.

Working memory is a limited capacity system that stores and processes information over short time periods and is essential for learning new information. Some studies have investigated the associations between socioeconomic position and working memory, however none have examined this across potentially dissociable aspects of working memory. Further, there are very few studies about children's working memory differences across and within different ethnic groups. Therefore, there is a need to understand the potential associations between socioeconomic position, ethnicity, and different aspects of children's working memory. We investigated children's working memory (n = 15,154) by socioeconomic group, using a latent class measure of family socioeconomic position, and then by ethnic group. To account for potential problems in applying socioeconomic measures across different ethnic groups, we then examined associations using an ethnic-specific socioeconomic measure within the ethnic majority group (White British) and the largest ethnic minority group (Pakistani). We found a strong association between socioeconomic group at birth and working memory at age 7-10 years, where the difference between the least and most deprived socioeconomic groups was equivalent to at least a 1-year age difference. We also found substantial differences in working memory between nine ethnic groups that varied by working memory task, where the difference between groups was equivalent to an age difference of between 6 and 24 months. Finally, we found evidence for a socioeconomic gradient in working memory for White British children, but this was considerably reduced in Pakistani children. These findings show the importance of separating out different ethnic groups when investigating associations between socioeconomic position and cognitive function, and that researchers need to be mindful when applying socioeconomic measures across ethnic groups. Where possible, ethnic-specific measures of socioeconomic position should be developed and applied for studies like these. Future research considering the possible mechanisms behind associations between ethnicity and working memory, and mechanisms by which socioeconomic position differentially influences working memory performance for different ethnic groups would shed further light on this important topic.

The association between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's working memory abilities: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Working memory is an essential cognitive skill for storing and processing limited amounts of information over short time periods. Researchers disagree about the extent to which socioeconomic position affects children's working memory, yet no study has systematically synthesised the literature regarding this topic. The current review therefore aimed to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic position and working memory in children, regarding both the magnitude and the variability of the association. METHODS: The review protocol was registered on PROSPERO and the PRISMA checklist was followed. Embase, Psycinfo and MEDLINE were comprehensively searched via Ovid from database inception until 3rd June 2021. Studies were screened by two reviewers at all stages. Studies were eligible if they included typically developing children aged 0-18 years old, with a quantitative association reported between any indicator of socioeconomic position and children's working memory task performance. Studies were synthesised using two data-synthesis methods: random effects meta-analyses and a Harvest plot. KEY FINDINGS: The systematic review included 64 eligible studies with 37,737 individual children (aged 2 months to 18 years). Meta-analyses of 36 of these studies indicated that socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with significantly lower scores working memory measures; a finding that held across different working memory tasks, including those that predominantly tap into storage (d = 0.45; 95% CI 0.27 to 0.62) as well as those that require processing of information (d = 0.52; 0.31 to 0.72). A Harvest plot of 28 studies ineligible for meta-analyses further confirmed these findings. Finally, meta-regression analyses revealed that the association between socioeconomic position and working memory was not moderated by task modality, risk of bias, socioeconomic indicator, mean age in years, or the type of effect size. CONCLUSION: This is the first systematic review to investigate the association between socioeconomic position and working memory in children. Socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with lower working memory ability in children, and that this association was similar across different working memory tasks. Given the strong association between working memory, learning, and academic attainment, there is a clear need to share these findings with practitioners working with children, and investigate ways to support children with difficulties in working memory.

Correction to 'Sensorimotor control dynamics and cultural biases: learning to move in the right (or left) direction'.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160806.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160806.].

Maternal iodine status in a multi-ethnic UK birth cohort: Associations with child cognitive and educational development.

BACKGROUND: Maternal iodine requirements increase during pregnancy to supply thyroid hormones critical for fetal neurodevelopment. Iodine insufficiency may result in poorer cognitive or child educational outcomes but current evidence is sparse and inconsistent. OBJECTIVES: To quantify the association between maternal iodine status and child educational outcomes. METHODS: Urinary iodine concentrations (UIC) and iodine/creatinine ratios (I:Cr) were measured in 6971 mothers at 26-28 weeks' gestation participating in the Born in Bradford cohort. Maternal iodine status was examined in relation to child school achievement (early years foundation stage (EYFS), phonics, and Key Stage 1 (KS1)), other learning outcomes, social and behavioural difficulties, and sensorimotor control in 5745 children aged 4-7 years. RESULTS: Median (interquartile range) UIC was 76 µg/L (46, 120), and I:Cr was 83 µg/g (59, 121). Overall, there was no strong or consistent evidence to support associations between UIC or I:Cr and neurodevelopmental outcomes. For instance, predicted EYFS and phonics scores (primary outcomes) at the 25th vs 75th I:Cr percentiles (99% confidence intervals) were similar, with no evidence of associations: EYFS scores were 32 (99% CI 31, 33) and 33 (99% CI 32, 34), and phonics scores were 34 (99% CI 33, 35) and 35 (99% CI 34, 36), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In the largest single study of its kind, there was little evidence of detrimental neurodevelopmental outcomes in children born to pregnant women with iodine insufficiency as defined by World Health Organization-outlined thresholds. Alternative functional biomarkers for iodine status in pregnancy and focused assessment of other health outcomes may provide additional insight.

Large-scale assessment of 7-11-year-olds' cognitive and sensorimotor function within the Born in Bradford longitudinal birth cohort study.

Background: Cognitive ability and sensorimotor function are crucial aspects of children's development, and are associated with physical and mental health outcomes and educational attainment. This paper describes cross-sectional sensorimotor and cognitive function data collected on over 15,000 children aged 7-10 years, collected as part of the Born in Bradford (BiB) longitudinal birth-cohort study. Methodological details of the large-scale data collection process are described, along with initial analyses of the data involving the relationship between cognition/sensorimotor ability and age and task difficulty, and associations between tasks. Method: Data collection was completed in 86 schools between May 2016 and July 2019. Children were tested at school, individually, using a tablet computer with a digital stylus or finger touch for input. Assessments comprised a battery of three sensorimotor tasks (Tracking, Aiming, & Steering) and five cognitive tasks (three Working Memory tasks, Inhibition, and Processing Speed), which took approximately 40 minutes. Results: Performance improved with increasing age and decreasing task difficulty, for each task. Performance on all three sensorimotor tasks was correlated, as was performance on the three working memory tasks. In addition, performance on a composite working memory score correlated with performance on both inhibition and processing speed. Interestingly, within age-group variation was much larger than between age-group variation. Conclusions: The current project collected computerised measures of a range of cognitive and sensorimotor functions at 7-10 years of age in over 15,000 children. Performance varied as expected by age and task difficulty, and showed the predicted correlations between related tasks. Large within-age group variation highlights the need to consider the profile of individual children in studying cognitive and sensorimotor development. These data can be linked to the wider BiB dataset including measures of physical and mental health, biomarkers and genome-wide data, socio-demographic information, and routine data from local health and education services.

Following Instructions in Working Memory: Do Older Adults Show the Enactment Advantage?

OBJECTIVES: In young adults, the ability to verbally recall instructions in working memory is enhanced if the sequences are physically enacted by the participant (self-enactment) or the experimenter (demonstration) during encoding. Here we examine the effects of self-enactment and demonstration at encoding on working memory performance in older and younger adults. METHOD: Fifty young (18-23 years) and 40 older (60-89 years) adults listened to sequences of novel action-object pairs before verbally recalling them in the correct order. There were three different encoding conditions: spoken only, spoken + demonstration, and spoken + self-enactment. We included two different levels of difficulty to investigate whether task complexity moderated the effect of encoding condition and whether this differed between age groups. RESULTS: Relative to the spoken only condition, demonstration significantly improved young and older adults' serial recall performance, but self-enactment only enhanced performance in the young adults, and this boost was smaller than the one gained through demonstration. DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that additional spatial-motoric information is beneficial for older adults when the actions are demonstrated to them, but not when the individual must enact the instructions themselves.

Comparing motor imagery and verbal rehearsal strategies in children's ability to follow spoken instructions.

The ability to follow spoken instructions is critical for children's learning in school and relies on the storage and processing of information in working memory. This study compared the effects of two encoding strategies (motor imagery and verbal rehearsal) on children's ability to follow spoken instructions in a working memory paradigm. A total of 146 children aged 7-12 years completed an instruction span task. In this task, children listened to a series of action-object commands and encoded them by either motor imagery or verbal rehearsal. They then attempted to recall the sequence in serial order by either enacted recall or verbal recall. Overall, children's ability to follow spoken instructions increased with age. In all age groups, children showed superior recall of instructions when they imagined the actions compared with verbal rehearsal of the actions during encoding, and this benefit of motor imagery was similar for verbal recall and enacted recall. Younger children reported motor imagery as more helpful than verbal rehearsal for remembering instructions, whereas older children considered verbal rehearsal as more useful. The study provides novel evidence for motor imagery as a superior strategy (relative to verbal rehearsal) for remembering spoken instructions in school-age children.

Can valuable information be prioritized in verbal working memory?

Though there is substantial evidence that individuals can prioritize more valuable information in visual working memory (WM), little research has examined this in the verbal domain. Four experiments were conducted to investigate this and the conditions under which effects emerge. In each experiment, participants listened to digit sequences and then attempted to recall them in the correct order. At the start of each block, participants were either told that all items were of equal value, or that an item at a particular serial position was worth more points. Recall was enhanced for these higher value items (Experiment 1a), a finding that was replicated while rejecting an alternative account based on distinctiveness (Experiment 1b). Thus, valuable information can be prioritized in verbal WM. Two further experiments investigated whether these boosts remained when participants completed a simple concurrent task disrupting verbal rehearsal (Experiment 2), or a complex concurrent task disrupting verbal rehearsal and executive resources (Experiment 3). Under simple concurrent task conditions, prioritization boosts were observed, but with increased costs to the less valuable items. Prioritization effects were also observed under complex concurrent task conditions, although this was accompanied by chance-level performance at most of the less valuable positions. A substantial recency advantage was also observed for the final item in each sequence, across all conditions. Taken together, this indicates that individuals can prioritize valuable information in verbal WM even when rehearsal and executive resources are disrupted, though they do so by neglecting or abandoning other items in the sequence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal iodine status in a multi-ethnic UK birth cohort: associations with autism spectrum disorder.

BACKGROUND: Maternal iodine requirements increase during pregnancy to supply thyroid hormones essential for fetal brain development. Maternal iodine deficiency can lead to hypothyroxinemia, a reduced fetal supply of thyroid hormones which, in the first trimester, has been linked to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the child. No study to date has explored the direct link between maternal iodine deficiency and diagnosis of ASD in offspring. METHODS: Urinary iodine concentrations (UIC) and iodine/creatinine ratios (I:Cr) were measured in 6955 mothers at 26-28 weeks gestation participating in the Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort. Maternal iodine status was examined in relation to the probability of a Read (CTV3) code for autism being present in a child's primary care records through a series of logistic regression models with restricted cubic splines. RESULTS: Median (inter-quartile range) UIC was 76 µg/L (46, 120) and I:Cr was 83 µg/g (59, 121) indicating a deficient population according to WHO guidelines. Ninety two children (1·3%) in our cohort had received a diagnosis of ASD by the census date. Overall, there was no evidence to support an association between I:Cr or UIC and ASD risk in children aged 8-12 years (p = 0·3). CONCLUSIONS: There was no evidence of an increased clinical ASD risk in children born to mothers with mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency at 26 weeks gestation. Alternative functional biomarkers of exposure and a wider range of conditions may provide further insight.

Maternal iodine status, intrauterine growth, birth outcomes and congenital anomalies in a UK birth cohort.

BACKGROUND: Severe iodine insufficiency in pregnancy has significant consequences, but there is inadequate evidence to indicate what constitutes mild or moderate insufficiency, in terms of observed detrimental effects on pregnancy or birth outcomes. A limited number of studies have examined iodine status and birth outcomes, finding inconsistent evidence for specific outcomes. METHODS: Maternal iodine status was estimated from spot urine samples collected at 26-28 weeks' gestation from 6971 mothers in the Born in Bradford birth cohort. Associations with outcomes were examined for both urinary iodine concentration (UIC) and iodine-to-creatinine ratio (I:Cr). Outcomes assessed included customised birthweight (primary outcome), birthweight, small for gestational age (SGA), low birthweight, head circumference and APGAR score. RESULTS: There was a small positive association between I:Cr and birthweight in adjusted analyses. For a typical participant, the predicted birthweight centile at the 25th percentile of I:Cr (59 µg/g) was 2.7 percentage points lower than that at the 75th percentile of I:Cr (121 µg/g) (99% confidence interval (CI) 0.8 to 4.6), birthweight was predicted to be 41 g lower (99% CI 13 to 69) and the predicted probability of SGA was 1.9 percentage points higher (99% CI 0.0 to 3.7). There was no evidence of associations using UIC or other birth outcomes, including stillbirth, preterm birth, ultrasound growth measures or congenital anomalies. CONCLUSION: Lower maternal iodine status was associated with lower birthweight and greater probability of SGA. Whilst small, the effect size for lower iodine on birthweight is comparable to environmental tobacco smoke exposure. Iodine insufficiency is avoidable, and strategies to avoid deficiency in women of reproductive age should be considered. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03552341. Registered on June 11, 2018.

Circuits that encode and guide alcohol-associated preference.

A powerful feature of adaptive memory is its inherent flexibility. Alcohol and other addictive substances can remold neural circuits important for memory to reduce this flexibility. However, the mechanism through which pertinent circuits are selected and shaped remains unclear. We show that circuits required for alcohol-associated preference shift from population level dopaminergic activation to select dopamine neurons that predict behavioral choice in Drosophila melanogaster. During memory expression, subsets of dopamine neurons directly and indirectly modulate the activity of interconnected glutamatergic and cholinergic mushroom body output neurons (MBON). Transsynaptic tracing of neurons important for memory expression revealed a convergent center of memory consolidation within the mushroom body (MB) implicated in arousal, and a structure outside the MB implicated in integration of naïve and learned responses. These findings provide a circuit framework through which dopamine neuronal activation shifts from reward delivery to cue onset, and provide insight into the maladaptive nature of memory.

Alcohol Causes Lasting Differential Transcription in Drosophila Mushroom Body Neurons.

Repeated alcohol experiences can produce long-lasting memories for sensory cues associated with intoxication. These memories can problematically trigger relapse in individuals recovering from alcohol use disorder (AUD). The molecular mechanisms by which ethanol changes memories to become long-lasting and inflexible remain unclear. New methods to analyze gene expression within precise neuronal cell types can provide further insight toward AUD prevention and treatment. Here, we used genetic tools in Drosophila melanogaster to investigate the lasting consequences of ethanol on transcription in memory-encoding neurons. Drosophila rely on mushroom body (MB) neurons to make associative memories, including memories of ethanol-associated sensory cues. Differential expression analyses revealed that distinct transcripts, but not genes, in the MB were associated with experiencing ethanol alone compared to forming a memory of an odor cue associated with ethanol. Adult MB-specific knockdown of spliceosome-associated proteins demonstrated the necessity of RNA-processing in ethanol memory formation. These findings highlight the dynamic, context-specific regulation of transcription in cue-encoding neurons, and the lasting effect of ethanol on transcript usage during memory formation.

Exploring the effects of demonstration and enactment in facilitating recall of instructions in working memory.

Across the lifespan the ability to follow instructions is essential for the successful completion of a multitude of daily activities. This ability will often rely on the storage and processing of information in working memory, and previous research in this domain has found that self-enactment at encoding or observing other-enactment at encoding (demonstration) improves performance at recall. However, no working memory research has directly compared these manipulations. Experiment 1 explored the effects of both self-enactment and demonstration on young adults' (N=48) recall of action-object instruction sequences (e.g. 'spin the circle, tap the square'). Both manipulations improved recall, with demonstration providing relatively larger boosts to performance across conditions. More detailed analyses suggested that this improvement was driven by improving the representations of actions, rather than objects, in these action-object sequences. Experiment 2 (N=24) explored this further, removing the objects from the physical environment and comparing partial demonstration (i.e. action-only or object-only) with no or full demonstration. The results showed that partial demonstration only benefitted features that were demonstrated, while full demonstration improved memory for actions, objects and their pairings. Overall these experiments indicate how self-enactment, and particularly demonstration, can benefit verbal recall of instruction sequences through the engagement of visuo-motor processes that provide additional forms of coding to support working memory performance.

Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance.

Research has shown that adults can engage in cognitive offloading, whereby internal processes are offloaded onto the environment to help task performance. Here, we investigate an application of this approach with children, in particular children with poor working memory. Participants were required to remember and recall sequences of colors by placing colored blocks in the correct serial order. In one condition the blocks were arranged to facilitate cognitive offloading (i.e., grouped by color), whereas in the other condition they were arranged randomly. Across two experiments (total N = 166) the ordered condition improved task performance for children with low working memory ability. In addition, participants in Experiment 2 rated the difficulty of the two arrangements and performed a further condition in which they were given an opportunity to freely arrange the blocks before completing the task. Despite performing better in the ordered condition, children with low working memory ability did not rate the ordered arrangement as easier, nor did they choose an ordered arrangement when given the opportunity to do so. This research shows that cognitive offloading can also be a useful process in populations other than typical adults, and the implications of this work for supporting children with poor working memory are discussed.

Growing up in Bradford: protocol for the age 7-11 follow up of the Born in Bradford birth cohort.

BACKGROUND: Born in Bradford (BiB) is a prospective multi-ethnic pregnancy and birth cohort study that was established to examine determinants of health and development during childhood and, subsequently, adult life in a deprived multi-ethnic population in the north of England. Between 2007 and 2010, the BiB cohort recruited 12,453 women who experienced 13,776 pregnancies and 13,858 births, along with 3353 of their partners. Forty five percent of the cohort are of Pakistani origin. Now that children are at primary school, the first full follow-up of the cohort is taking place. The aims of the follow-up are to investigate the determinants of children's pre-pubertal health and development, including through understanding parents' health and wellbeing, and to obtain data on exposures in childhood that might influence future health. METHODS: We are employing a multi-method approach across three data collection arms (community-based family visits, school based physical assessment, and whole classroom cognitive, motor function and wellbeing measures) to follow-up over 9000 BiB children aged 7-11 years and their families between 2017 and 2021. We are collecting detailed parent and child questionnaires, cognitive and sensorimotor assessments, blood pressure, anthropometry and blood samples from parents and children. Dual x-ray absorptiometry body scans, accelerometry and urine samples are collected on subsamples. Informed consent is collected for continued routine data linkage to health, social care and education records. A range of engagement activities are being used to raise the profile of BiB and to disseminate findings. DISCUSSION: Our multi-method approach to recruitment and assessment provides an efficient method of collecting rich data on all family members. Data collected will enhance BiB as a resource for the international research community to study the interplay between ethnicity, socioeconomic circumstances and biology in relation to cardiometabolic health, mental health, education, cognitive and sensorimotor development and wellbeing.

Can children prioritize more valuable information in working memory? An exploration into the effects of motivation and memory load.

Recent research found no evidence that children aged 7-10 years are able to direct their attention to more valuable information in working memory. The current experiments examined whether children demonstrate this ability when the reward system used to motivate participants is engaging and age-appropriate. This was explored across different memory loads (3- vs. 4-item arrays) and modes of presentation (sequential vs. simultaneous). Younger (7-8 years) and older children (9-10 years) were shown 3 or 4 colored shapes and asked to recall the color of one probed item following a brief delay. Items were either presented sequentially (Experiment 1) or simultaneously (Experiment 2). Children completed a differential probe value condition, in which the first shape (Experiment 1) or the top-left shape (Experiment 2) was worth more points than the other items, and an equal probe value condition, in which all shapes were equally valuable. Children were told they could use the points collected to play a specially designed game at the end of the session, and that they would be given a prize if they collected enough points. When items were presented sequentially, significant probe value effects emerged, with children showing higher accuracy for the first item when this serial position was more valuable. This effect was consistent across age group and memory load. When items were encountered simultaneously, both groups showed probe value effects in the higher (4-item) memory load condition. This indicates that children can prioritize more valuable information in working memory when sufficiently motivated to do so. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Effect of a Verbal Concurrent Task on Visual Precision in Working Memory.

By investigating the effect of individualized verbal load on a visual working memory task, we investigated whether working memory is better captured by modality-specific stores or a general attentional resource. A visual measure was used that allows for the precision of representations in working memory to be quantified. Bayesian analyses were employed to contrast the likelihood of our data assuming a small versus a large effect, as predicted by the differing accounts. We found evidence that the effect of verbal load on visual precision and binary feature recall was small. The results were indeterminate for the size of the dual task effect on verbal accuracy and the probability of recalling a continuous target feature. These results, in part, support a multiple component account of working memory. An analysis of how the chosen effect intervals affect the results is also reported, highlighting the importance of making specific predictions in the literature.