# Cognitive effort and capacity in visual working memory development

> **NIH NIH R15** · UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON · 2020 · $457,061

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Visual Working Memory (VWM) - the limited-capacity system that maintains and manipulates
information in service to an ongoing task - underlies the ability to represent, learn, and reason
about the visual environment. In adults, proactive interference (PI) has been identified as a
fundamental constraint on working memory capacity, if not the sole constraint. PI occurs when
earlier, now irrelevant information intrudes on currently relevant information (“I think I left my keys
on the table... or was that yesterday?”). In spite of the central role of PI in theoretical models of
working memory, developmentally it has only been measured by a handful of studies, all of them
in children over 8 years of age. In our proposed project, we will use Delayed Match Retrieval, our
innovative, extensible, gaze-based VWM paradigm, to characterize and track the early
development of PI resolution. In Specific Aim 1, we address fundamental questions about the
sources of PI in VWM in 3-year-olds, the youngest population tested thus far, providing a broad
foundation for future theoretical work. In Specific Aim 2, we will conduct a longitudinal study of
children between 3 and 4 years of age, hypothesizing that development will bring increasing
resistance to interference. Recent adult studies have shown that the resolution of interference is
carried out by cognitive control mechanisms (related to decision-making) in the frontal cortex that
are modulated by sustained attention. Here we target the preschool age because it is a period of
pivotal importance in the development of both sustained attention and a range of other cognitive
mechanisms (rule learning, hierarchical reasoning, planning; and language). In Specific Aim 3,
we will quantify both the effect of sustained attention (leveraging our expertise in pupillometry),
and general cognitive abilities, as measured by a standardized assessment (Mullen Scales of
Early Learning) on the development of interference resolution. We predict that the functional
relationship between sustained attention and PI resolution will increase over development as
children become able to exert more effort during harder tasks with more interference, independent
of the effect of general cognitive ability. This proposal thus presents a critical multi-method test of
the role of sustained attention in the early development of VWM mechanisms.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10124722
- **Project number:** 2R15HD086658-02A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Erik Blaser
- **Activity code:** R15 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $457,061
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2015-12-18 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10124722

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10124722, Cognitive effort and capacity in visual working memory development (2R15HD086658-02A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10124722. Licensed CC0.

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