Visuo-spatial bootstrapping refers to the well-replicated phenomena in which serial recall in a purely verbal task is boosted by presenting digits within the familiar spatial layout of a typical telephone keypad. The visuo-spatial bootstrapping phenomena indicates that additional support comes from long-term knowledge of a fixed spatial pattern, and prior experimentation supports the idea that access to this benefit depends on the availability of the visuo-spatial motor system (e.g., Allen et al., 2015). We investigate this by tracking participants\' eye movements during encoding and retention of verbal lists to learn whether gaze patterns support verbal memory differently when verbal information is presented in the familiar visual layout. Participants\' gaze was recorded during attempts to recall lists of seven digits in three formats: centre of the screen, typical telephone keypad, or a spatially identical layout with randomized number placement. Performance was better with the typical than with the novel layout. Our data show that eye movements differ when encoding and retaining verbal information that has a familiar layout compared with the same verbal information presented in a novel layout, suggesting recruitment of different spatial rehearsal strategies. However, no clear link between gaze pattern and recall accuracy was observed, which suggests that gazes play a limited role in retention, at best.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to investigate the cognitive and affective factors associated with cross-cultural differences in arithmetic tasks.
METHODS: A total of 404 third- and fourth- graders were recruited from China and Italy to complete exact arithmetic, arithmetic estimation and cognitive tasks (i.e., short-term memory, executive functions, and fluid reasoning). Their mathematical anxiety was also measured.
RESULTS: The results showed that Chinese children performed better than Italian children in both arithmetic tasks and in shifting task. Italian children performed better in visuospatial updating task and reported higher levels of mathematical anxiety than their Chinese peers. Multi-group path analyses showed that the patterns of relations among cognitive factors (i.e., short-term memory, inhibition and shifting), mathematical anxiety, and arithmetic performance were similar across groups. The only exception was that visuospatial updating uniquely predicted arithmetic estimation for Chinese but not for Italian children.
CONCLUSIONS: Chinese children outperformed their Italian peers in the exact arithmetic task, likely due to the greater emphasis on arithmetic fluency in Chinese mathematics education, both in schools and at home. They also had a slight advantage than Italian peers in the arithmetic estimation task. The unique link between updating and arithmetic estimation found in Chinese children but not Italian children suggests that, although arithmetic estimation is not emphasized in the curricula of either country, instruction and practice in exact arithmetic may enhance Chinese children\'s efficiency in solving arithmetic estimation problems.

Recent studies have highlighted the presence of cognitive deficits following COVID-19 that persist beyond acute infection, regardless of the initial disease severity. Impairments in short- and long-term memory are among the core deficits reported by patients and observed in objective tests of memory performance. We aimed to extend previous studies by examining performance in a task that allows us to directly compare and contrast memories at different timescales. More specifically, we assessed both short- and long-term memories for contextual-spatial associations encoded during a common session and probed at different durations using an equivalent task in non-hospitalized individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 compared to healthy controls. The approach equated all aspects of memory materials and response demands, isolating performance changes resulting only from memory timescales and thus allowing us to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on cognition. In addition to providing measures of accuracy and response times, the task also provided a sensitive continuous readout of the precision of memory representations, specifically by examining the resolution with which spatial locations were retained in memory. The results demonstrated selective impairment of long-term memory performance in individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 infection. Short-term memory performance remained comparable to healthy controls. Specifically, poor precision of long-term memory representations was demonstrated, which improved with days since diagnosis. No such relationship was observed for short-term memory performance. Our findings reveal a specific impairment to the precision of spatial-contextual long-term memory representations in individuals recovering from mild COVID-19 and demonstrate evidence of recovery in long-term memory over time. Further, the experimental design provides a carefully controlled and sensitive framework to assess memory across different durations with the potential to provide more detailed phenotyping of memory deficits associated with COVID-19 in general.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the cross-linguistic influence of previously learned languages and working memory capacities on the vocabulary performance of two different typological languages. The objectives of this study were (1) to compare the working memory capacities of bilingual adults in relation to the vocabulary performance of two different languages never learned by the participants, and (2) to analyze to what extent the typology of previously learned languages influences working memory capacities in relation to the vocabulary performance of French and Nahuatl. A group of 43 Mexican Spanish college students participated in this experimental study. The participants completed a series of working memory tasks in Nahuatl and French. The results showed that working memory capacities were lower in Nahuatl than in French. Thus, a correlation was found between their first and second language and vocabulary performance in French. We can consider the influence of previously learned languages as a significant factor in vocabulary acquisition in accordance with the participants\' working memory capacities.

Anxiety involves the anticipation of aversive outcomes and can impair neurocognitive processes, such as the ability to recall faces encoded during the anxious state. It is important to precisely delineate and determine the replicability of these effects using causal state anxiety inductions in the general population. This study therefore aimed to replicate prior research on the distinct impacts of threat-of-shock-induced anxiety on the encoding and recognition stage of emotional face processing, in a large asymptomatic sample (n = 92). We successfully replicated previous results demonstrating impaired recognition of faces encoded under threat-of-shock. This was supported by a mega-analysis across three independent studies using the same paradigm (n = 211). Underlying this, a whole-brain fMRI analysis revealed enhanced activation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), alongside previously seen activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) when combined in a mega-analysis with the fMRI findings we aimed to replicate. We further found replications of hippocampus activation when the retrieval and encoding states were congruent. Our results support the notion that state anxiety disrupts face recognition, potentially due to attentional demands of anxious arousal competing with affective stimuli processing during encoding and suggest that regions of the cingulate cortex play pivotal roles in this.

Brain size variability in primates has been attributed to various domain-specific socio-ecological factors. A recently published large-scale study of short-term memory abilities in 41 primate species (ManyPrimates 2022 Anim. Behav. Cogn. 9, 428-516. (doi:10.26451/abc.09.04.06.2022)) did not find any correlations with 11 different proxies of external cognitive demands. Here, we found that the interspecific variation in test performance shows correlated evolution with total brain size, with the relationship becoming tighter as species with small sample sizes were successively removed, whereas it was not predicted by the often-used encephalization quotient. In a subsample, we also found that the sizes of brain regions thought to be involved in short-term memory did not predict performance better than overall brain size. The dependence on brain size suggests that domain-general cognitive processes underlie short-term memory as tested by ManyPrimates. These results support the emerging notion that comparative studies of brain size do not generally identify domain-specific cognitive adaptations but rather reveal varying selections on domain-general cognitive abilities. Finally, because attentional processes beyond short-term memory also affect test performance, we suggest that the delayed response test can be refined.

Sentence comprehension requires the integration of linguistic units presented in a temporal sequence based on a non-linear underlying syntactic structure. While it is uncontroversial that storage is mandatory for this process, there are opposing views regarding the relevance of general short-term-/working-memory capacities (STM/WM) versus language specific resources. Here we report results from 43 participants with an acquired brain lesion in the extended left hemispheric language network and resulting language deficits, who performed a sentence-to-picture matching task and an experimental task assessing phonological short-term memory. The sentence task systematically varied syntactic complexity (embedding depth and argument order) while lengths, number of propositions and plausibility were kept constant. Clinical data including digit-/ block-spans and lesion size and site were additionally used in the analyses. Correlational analyses confirm that performance on STM/WM-tasks (experimental task and digit-span) are the only two relevant predictors for correct sentence-picture-matching, while reaction times only depended on age and lesion size. Notably increasing syntactic complexity reduced the correlational strength speaking for the additional recruitment of language specific resources independent of more general verbal STM/WM capacities, when resolving complex syntactic structure. The complementary lesion-behaviour analysis yielded different lesion volumes correlating with either the sentence-task or the STM-task. Factoring out STM measures lesions in the anterior temporal lobe correlated with a larger decrease in accuracy with increasing syntactic complexity. We conclude that overall sentence comprehension depends on STM/WM capacity, while increases in syntactic complexity tax another independent cognitive resource.

Having a good memory is essential for carrying out daily tasks. People cannot study, plan, remember or navigate life effectively if they are memoryless. People may be at risk when mistakes made in the past will be repeated and lessons regarding danger cannot be learned. In the community, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is common and individuals with TBI frequently have memory problems. It is crucial to study how TBI affects memory to better understand the underlying mechanism and to tailor rehabilitation for patients with a range of pathologies and severity levels. Thus, this paper aimed to review studies related to TBI\'s effect on memory. This review examined recent studies to learn more regarding and comprehend the connection between TBI and memory, including short-term memory (STM), working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). This will undoubtedly have a big impact on how memory problems that may arise after TBI will be addressed. Virtual reality and other technological advancements have given the medical community a new way to investigate rehabilitative therapy.

Dyslexia, a specific difficulty in acquiring proficient reading, is also characterized by reduced short-term memory (STM) capacity. Extensive research indicates that individuals with developmental dyslexia (IDDs) benefit less from exposure, and this hampers their long-term knowledge accumulation. It is well established that long-term knowledge has a great effect on performance in STM tasks, and thus IDDs\' reduced benefit of exposure could potentially reduce their relative performance in such tasks, especially when frequent items, such as digit-words, are used. In this study we used a standard, widely used, STM assessment: the Digit Span subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The task was conducted twice: in native language and in second language. As exposure to native language is greater than exposure to second language, we predicted that IDDs\' performance in the task administered in native language will reveal a larger group difference as compared to second language, due to IDDs\' reduced benefit of item frequency. The prediction was confirmed, in line with the hypothesis that reduced STM in dyslexia to a large extent reflects reduced benefits from long-term item frequency and not a reduced STM per se.

Iconic memory and short-term memory are not only crucial for perception and cognition, but also of great importance to mental health. Here, we first showed that both types of memory could be improved by improving limiting processes in visual processing through perceptual learning. Normal adults were trained in a contrast detection task for ten days, with their higher-order aberrations (HOA) corrected in real-time. We found that the training improved not only their contrast sensitivity function (CSF), but also their iconic memory and baseline information maintenance for short-term memory, and the relationship between memory and CSF improvements could be well-predicted by an observer model. These results suggest that training the limiting component of a cognitive task with visual perceptual learning could improve visual cognition. They may also provide an empirical foundation for new therapies to treat people with poor sensory memory.