The Bigger The Working Memory Load,the Harder It Is To Shift—Evidence From Digital Alternate Comparison Task

Cognitive flexibility is the flexibility of switching between tasks when individual in the face of complex cognitive activities.Children's learning,adult's work and other aspects of daily life may involve cognitive flexibility.Improving cognitive flexibility is of great significance to live and learn.Working memory and cognitive flexibility are two core components of executive function,but the relationship between them is not clear.Some researchers consider that working memory has nothing to do with switching.While,other researchers approve that part of the switching cost comes from the limitation of working memory,which is related to the working memory load.In order to find out whether working memory is one of the important factors affecting switch task,this study will conduct exploration through three experiments.In experiment 1,Adapted Flexible Item Selection Task and Counting Span Test are adopted to measure the cognitive flexibility and working memory of 36 children aged from 8 to 10,and correlation analysis is given.The results show that,children aged from 8 to 10 are able to complete the 4-match test,while difficulty shown in the fourth choice.However,children tend to be difficult to finish the last two choices of 6-match test successfully.The working memory capacity of children aged from 8 to 10 is 8.07 ± 1.41 units.What's more,cognitive flexibility scores are significantly and positively correlated with the working memory scores.In experiment 2,the purpose is to compare the difference of reaction time,accuracy and switching cost between high working memory load and low working memory load directly.Research of the influence of working memory on shifting is investigated by within subjects design.The Digital Updating Task is adapted into a Digital Alternate Comparison Task.Fifty-six college students aged 18-24 are tested through the Digital Alternate Comparison Task.The task is divided into high working memory load and low working memory load.Through the regulation of working memory load,observing the changing of switching cost under different working memory load level.The results show that reaction time under switching condition is significantly higher than that under non-switching condition.The accuracy under switching condition is significantly lower than that under non-switching condition.What's more,the reaction time of switching condition under high working memory load is significantly higher than that under low working memory load.The accuracy under high working memory load is significantly lower than that under low working memory load.And the switching cost under high working memory load is also significantly higher than that under low working memory load.These findings suggest that switching cost is proved to exist in switching task.The bigger the working memory load,the larger the shifting cost is.In experiment 3,we add a condition of preparation time on the basis of experiment 2 to explore the effect of high and low working memory load on switching cost under different preparation time.The results show that the switching cost is affected by working memory,but is not affected by the preparation time.The response time of the switch condition and non-switch condition are both reduce with preparation time.Under different memory load conditions,the effect of the switching cost is the same.Prolonging preparation time can effectively reduce the response time under low and high working memory load and the response time under low working memory load is more significantly affected.