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Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches to Individual Differences in Working Memory and Executive Control: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

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Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition

Part of the book series: The Springer Series on Human Exceptionality ((SSHE))

Abstract

Analyses of individual differences play an important role in cognitive neuroscience studies of working memory and executive control (WM/EC). Many studies examining the neural substrates of working memory have relied upon correlations between brain activity and either task performance measures or trait measures of cognitive ability. However, there are important conceptual and methodological issues that surround the use of individual difference measures to explain brain activation patterns. These issues make the interpretation of correlations a more complex endeavor than is typically appreciated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that extreme groups designs are not equivalent to post-hoc dichotomization of participants based on a median split of scores on some variable of interest. The latter approach substantially reduces power and is almost never justified (Cohen, 1983; MacCallum, Zhang, Preacher, & Rucker, 2002; Preacher, Rucker, MacCallum, & Nicewander, 2005). The same is true for subsampling extreme groups from a larger sample (e.g., performing a t-test comparing the lowest-scoring ten participants to the highest-scoring ten participants drawn from a full sample of 60 participants).

  2. 2.

    Cohen’s (1988, p. 23) formula provides \(r \approx d/\sqrt {d^2 + 4}.\).

  3. 3.

    Note that values of r ≥ 0.5 are extremely rare in most areas of psychology; see Meyer et al. (2001) for a review indicating that most effects across broad domains of psychology and medicine are in the range of 0.1–0.3.

  4. 4.

    For the sake of simplicity, this example assumes that each voxel represents an independent observation.

  5. 5.

    We used R and the add-on pwr library to perform all of the calculations and simulations reported in this chapter.

  6. 6.

    Note that the term reliability is used here to refer specifically to the stability of the rank order of BOLD activation across subjects. That is, the BOLD signal can be considered reliable if individuals who show high levels of activation when scanned on one occasion also show high levels of activation when scanned on another occasion under the same conditions. The term reliability is also often used to refer to the replicability or reproducibility of fMRI results at the group level – e.g., deeming the BOLD signal reliable if approximately the same pattern of group-level activation can be replicated across different samples, scanners, institutions, task variants, etc. Although these two senses of reliability are interrelated, they are not equivalent. We focus here only on the former sense, as it is the one relevant for individual differences analyses.

  7. 7.

    It may also be that these low test-retest correlations reflect a genuine lack of stable individual differences. However, the strong hemispheric asymmetry and conflicting findings across studies seem to weigh against such a conclusion, as does the fact that numerous studies have detected individual differences effects in the amygdala using similar contrasts (Canli, Sivers, Whitfield, Gotlib, & Gabrieli, 2002; Canli et al., 2001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Psychology & Radiology, Washington University, 1125, St. Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Tal Yarkoni & Todd S. Braver

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  1. Tal Yarkoni
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  2. Todd S. Braver
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Correspondence to Todd S. Braver .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Al. Mickiewicza 3, Cracow, 31-120, Poland

    Aleksandra Gruszka

  2. Dept. Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Dyer Hall 217, Cincinnati, 45221, USA

    Gerald Matthews

  3. Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Al. Mickiewicza 3, Cracow, 31-120, Poland

    Blazej Szymura

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Yarkoni, T., Braver, T.S. (2010). Cognitive Neuroscience Approaches to Individual Differences in Working Memory and Executive Control: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. In: Gruszka, A., Matthews, G., Szymura, B. (eds) Handbook of Individual Differences in Cognition. The Springer Series on Human Exceptionality. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1210-7_6

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