Effects Of Age On Teenager's Working Memory: Related An Event-related Potential Study

The article analyzed how neurophysiological signals of teenager's working mernory(WM) change with increasing age. We used n-back paradigm to record ERP from 52 healthy subjects with an age range from 14 to 22 years old in three groups. Our experiment consisted of 4 subexperiments and has two types of working memory tasks: spatial working memory and verbal working memory tasks, furthermore, every task included two levels of difficulty. The results were as follows:1 Reaction time was faster with increasing age, particularly in the more difficult task, but it didn't to reach significance .2 There is no significant difference in accuracy of simple tasks in three groups, but there is significant difference in accuracy of complicated tasks in different age groups with junior high school group significantly lower than others.3 There was no significant difference in N100 amplitude and latency on frontal area in three groups.4 P200 amplitude on frontal area was descending with age increasing and there was significant difference between junior high school group and college group. Its latency was no significant difference in three groups.5 P100 amplitude on occipital area was descending when age was increasing and there was significant difference in latency of junior high school group and college group.6 N160 amplitude on occipital area was increasing with age increasing and the latency was descending with age increasing and there was significant difference in junior high school group and college group.7 P300 average amplitude on parietal area was increasing with age increasing and junior high school group's was significantly lower than two others.