Following instructions in a virtual school: Does working memory play a role?

Mem Cogn (2016) 44:580–589 DOI 10.3758/s13421-015-0579-2 Following instructions in a virtual school: Does working memory play a role? Agnieszka J. Jaroslawska 1 & Susan E. Gathercole 1 & Matthew R. Logie 1 & Joni Holmes 1 Published online: 17 December 2015 # The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Accumulating evidence that working memory supports the ability to follow instructions has so far been restricted to experimental paradigms that have greatly simplified the practical demands of performing actions to instructions in everyday tasks. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether working memory is involved in maintaining information over the longer periods of time that are more typical of everyday situations that require performing instructions to command. Forty-two children 7–11 years of age completed assessments of working memory, a real-world following-instructions task employing 3-D objects, and two new computerized instruction-following tasks involving navigation around a virtual school to complete a sequence of practical spoken commands. One task involved performing actions in a single classroom, and the other, performing actions in multiple locations in a virtual school building. Verbal working memory was closely linked with all three following-instructions paradigms, but with greater association to the virtual than to the real-world tasks. These results indicate that verbal working memory plays a key role in following instructions over extended periods of activity. Keywords Working memory . Following instructions . Virtual environment * Agnieszka J. Jaroslawska 1 MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK The ability to follow instructions successfully is vital for effective cognitive functioning, in situations ranging from a child carrying out a multistep learning activity under the teacher’s guidance, a driver using spoken instructions to navigate a journey to an unfamiliar destination, or an individual following a complex medication schedule that involves differing doses and drugs. Each of these activities has been recognized to be challenging and prone to error (e.g., Gathercole & Alloway, 2008; Osterberg & Blaschke, 2005; Wickens, Toplak, & Wiesenthal, 2008). One important constraint is the capacity of working memory to retain critical information bridging the period from when instructions are being received through to their performance (e.g., Allen & Waterman, 2015; Engle, Carullo, & Collins, 1991; Gathercole, Durling, Evans, Jeffcock, & Stone, 2008; Yang, Gathercole, & Allen, 2014). A limitation of the experimental paradigms of instructionfollowing to date is that they have simplified the practical demands of these real-life situations. For example, tasks have typically involved the simple manipulation of objects placed in the immediate line of vision of participants and located within an easy hand’s reach (Allen & Waterman, 2015; Engle et al., 1991; Gathercole et al., 2008; Yang, Allen, & Gathercole, 2015b; Yang, Allen, Yu, & Chan, 2015a; Yang et al., 2014). This enables even lengthy sequences of actions to be executed rapidly. In contrast, when the child in the classroom, the driver behind the wheel, or the individual taking medication is following instructions, the specific actions are often more complex and less predictable, and the entire sequence may take an extended period of time to complete. The purpose of the present study was to explore whether working memory also plays a role in a more ecologically valid instruction-following task designed to mimic the everyday practical demands imposed on children in their school life. This was captured by a 2-D computer-simulated environment of a school, in which the children received instructions to Mem Cogn (2016) 44:580–589 perform sequences of actions either within a single classroom or through navigation across multiple locations in a virtual school building. Following instructions through to successful completion requires simultaneously holding in mind the detailed content of the sequence while monitoring ongoing performance. This capacity to maintain information while engaged in other cognitive activities is a key feature of working memory (e.g., Baddeley, 2012; Cowan, 2005; Oberauer, 2002, 2013; Shipstead, Lindsey, Marshall, & Engle, 2014). There are many alternative theoretical accounts of working memory, but a common feature shared across models is that working memory involves limited-capacity storage combined with attentional control (e.g., Cowan, 2005; Luck & Vogel, 2013; Oberauer, 2002; Oberauer, Süß, Wilhelm, & Wittman, 2003; Shipstead et al., 2014). The multiple-component model, introduced by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and later revised by Baddeley (2000, 2012), has been particularly valuable in advancing our understanding of how individuals follow instructions. This consists of a central executive responsible for attentional control within and beyond working memory, which is supported by two specialized limited-capacity stores—the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad—that are responsible for the maintenance of verbal and visuospatial information, respectively. The capacity of the two domainspecific slave systems is typically assessed using short-term memory measures involving the simple storage and retrieval of information, whereas the domain-general resources of the central executive are measured using complex working memory tasks comprising concurrent processing and storage of material (see, e.g., Conway et al., 2005). The newest addition to the model, the episodic buffer, is a temporary multidimensional store that forms an interface between the subsystems of working memory and long-term memory (Baddeley, 2000). Recent studies have identified a role for working memory in following instructions. Concurrent tasks designed to interfere with the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad have been shown to disrupt the ability to follow written instructions (Yang et al., 2014). These results suggest that verbal instructions may be held in the phonological loop and supplemented by additional visuospatial information in the environment, with the central executive coordinating the execution of actions through the retrieval of information from these stores. In childhood, working memory provides crucial support for the retention of both activity-specific and classroom management instructions at school (Gathercole & Alloway, 2008; Gathercole, Lamont, & Alloway, 2006). Consistent with this, verbal complex memory span measures associated with the attentional-control aspect of working memory are closely linked with children’s abilities to perform task instructions such as Pick up the yellow ruler and then touch the blue folder (Engle et al., 1991; Gathercole et al., 2008). 581 The tasks in this area of research (Allen & Waterman, 2015; Engle et al., 1991; (...truncated)