Cognitive psychology

Neuropsychology

Working memory

Cognition

Operating system

Psychiatry

Developmental psychology

Computer science

Recall

Sleep (system call)

Psychology

Sleep quality

Mood

Medicine

Clinical psychology

Audiology

Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society

Objectives: Reduction in the amount of information (storage capacity) retained in working memory (WM) has been associated with sleep loss. The present study examined whether reduced WM capacity is also related to poor everyday sleep quality and, more importantly, whether the effects of sleep quality could be dissociated from the effects of depressed mood and age on WM. Methods: In two studies, WM was assessed using a short-term recall task, producing behavioral measures for both the amount of retained WM information (capacity) and how precise the retained WM representations were (precision). Self-report measures of sleep quality and depressed mood were obtained using questionnaires. Results: In a sample of college students, Study 1 found that poor sleep quality and depressed mood could independently predict reduced WM capacity, but not WM precision. Study 2 generalized these sleep- and mood-related WM capacity effects to a community sample (aged 21–77 years) and further showed that age was associated with reduced WM precision. Conclusions: Together, these findings demonstrate dissociable effects of three health-related factors (sleep, mood, and age) on WM representations and highlighte the importance of assessing different aspects of WM representations (e.g., capacity and precision) in future neuropsychological research.

Poor Sleep Quality and Compromised Visual Working Memory Capacity