1. Visuospatial Bootstrapping in older adults and MCI Clara Calia1, Stephen Darling 1, Richard J. Allen 2, Jelena Havelka 2, Giulia De Feudis3, Antonella Pinto3, MariaFara DeCaro3 1Queen Margaret University, 2 University of Leeds, 3University of Bari ccalia@qmu.ac.uk BACKGROUND Recent studies on verbal immediate serial recall (Darling & Havelka, 2010; Darling et al., 2012; Darling et al. 2014; Allen et al., 2014; Race et al. 2015) show evidence of the integration of information from verbal and visuospatial short term memory (STM) with long term memory (LTM) representations. This so-called ‘visuospatial bootstrapping’ (VSB) pattern, in which verbal serial recall is improved when the information is arranged in a familiar spatially distributed pattern, such as a telephone keypad, is consistent with the existence within working memory (WM) of an episodic buffer (EB; Baddeley, 2000). The study investigated how visuospatial systems support verbal WM using the visuospatial bootstrapping paradigm, specifically aiming to see if the bootstrapping pattern persisted in a sample of older adults and patients with Mild Cognitive Impairments (MCI). VSB involves the integration of information Verbal and Visuospatial short term memory (STM) Long term memory (LTM) representations SAMPLE 28 older adults (60 -77 years old) 21 MCI (60-80 years old) Verbal Immediate Serial recall Span Assessment: Participants on the VSB task were tested at their individual span to ascertain this. Participants were asked to remember random sequences of digits using SD displays 15 Trials - at span in each of 2 conditions: - Single Digit (SD) - Typical Keypad (TKP) METHOD VISUOSPATIAL BOOTSTRAPPING (VSB) Results and Conclusions REFERENCES Baddeley, A. D. (2000). The episodic buffer: A new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 417–423. Darling, S. and Havelka, J. (2010). Visuospatial bootstrapping: Evidence for binding of verbal and spatial information in working memory, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Darling, S.; Allen, R. J.; Havelka, J.; Campbell, A.; and Rattray, E. (2012). Visuospatial bootstrapping: Long-term memory representations are necessary for implicit binding of verbal and visuospatial working memory. Psychon Bull Rev. Darling, S., Parker, M.J., Goodall, K.E., Havelka, J. and Allen, R. (2013). Visuospatial bootstrapping: Implicit binding of verbal working memory to visuospatial representations in children and adults. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Race, E., Palombo, E.D., Cadden, M.C., Burke, K., Verfaellie, M. (2015). Memory integration in amnesia: Prior knowledge supports verbal short-term memory. Neuropsychologia70. 272–280 The bootstrapping effect was investigated for the first time in a group of older adults and MCI. With ith regard to overall memory capacity in the single digit span task pre-test, mean span was 4.67 items (SD = 1.14, min = 4, max = 8) for the group of older adults, whilst it was significantly lower for the MCI participants (M = 3.76 items: SD = 1.7, min = 2, max = 7 ; t (47) = - 1.9, p = 0.63 ) There was a substantial main effect of display suggestive of bootstrapping across the two groups (F (1,45) = 6.30, partial eta squared =.12, p =.016), but the interaction effect between display type and groups was not statistically significant (F (1,45) =.31, partial eta squared=.007, p = 0.578). The main effect of group was not statistically significant (F (1,45) = 1.05, partial eta squared =.023, p =.31). The main effect of display type reflected that there were differences in memory performance across the 2 conditions (single location, standard keypad) and across the two groups. Performance in the Standard Keypad was significantly better than in the single item condition. This study indicates a substantial visual bootstrapping effect across the two groups. 30 5 123 456 789 0 123 456 789 0 123 456 789 0 … RIPETI... RIPETI Typical Keypad (TKP) Single Digit (SD)