PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Shahrzad Mohammadpour Esfahan
AU  - Mohammad-Hossein H.K Nili
AU  - Mehdi Sanayei
AU  - Ehsan Rezayat
TI  - Aging Decreases the Precision of Visual Working Memory
AID  - 10.1101/2023.01.03.522567
DP  - 2023 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2023.01.03.522567
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/01/04/2023.01.03.522567.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2023/01/04/2023.01.03.522567.full
AB  - Objectives Working memory (WM) is a cognitive ability that enables us to hold information temporarily. As age increases during life, cognitive abilities such as WM performance decrease. Errors in WM tasks arise from different sources, such as decreasing precision and random response. In the current study, we investigated the effect of age on WM and elucidated sources of errors.Method A total of 102 healthy individuals aged 18 to 71, participated in the study. A face-based visual WM task was designed and performed. Responses were collected using a graded scale in a delayed match-to-sample reproduction task.Results The error of participants increased significantly as they aged. According to our analysis of the source of error, the standard deviation of error distribution increased considerably with age. However, there was no significant change in uniform probability with age. These observations were similar between male and female participants.Conclusion We found that WM performance declines through the lifespan. Investigating the sources of error, we found that the precision of WM decreased with age. This decline was monotonous without any particular age at which a significant drop-off occurred. The results also indicated that the probability of guessing the response as a measure of random response is not affected by age.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.