The vigilance task induced fatigue as shown by a significant vigilance decrement and also significantly lowered positive affect and cognitive engagement, and significantly increased distress across all three conditions. Measures of affect, stress, and working memory were taken before and after the vigilance task, and again after a rest intervention. The psychological processes most in need of recovery were identified as cognitive and affective restoration. Sixty students were randomly assigned to an indoor plant, guided meditation, or control rest-break condition. This study investigated whether indoor plants were as effective as guided meditation for enabling psychological recovery after fatigue induced by the abbreviated vigilance task. The review concludes with general recommendations and best practices for researchers interested in conducting studies of individual differences in attention control. Topics covered include psychological testing, cognitive training, education, sports, police decision-making, human factors, and disorders within clinical psychology. We then selectively review existing literature on the role of both working memory and attention in various applied settings and explain, in each case, why a switch in emphasis to attention control is warranted. The review begins with a discussion of relevant literature on the nature and measurement of both working memory capacity and attention control, including recent developments in the study of individual differences of attention control. In this review, we argue that researchers would therefore generally be better suited to studying the role of attention control rather than memory-based abilities in explaining real-world behavior and performance in humans. Although working memory and attention are intertwined, several studies have recently shown that individual differences in the general ability to control attention is more strongly predictive of human behavior than working memory capacity. Working memory capacity is an important psychological construct, and many real-world phenomena are strongly associated with individual differences in working memory functioning. Evidence-based therapies can be augmented to target LS and cognition. LS and verbal WM and processing speed predicted one another across long durations. However, change in spatial cognition did not predict change in LS (| d | = 0.085). Additionally, depletion in processing speed and verbal WM predicted a future decrease in LS ( d = 0.142–0.269). Reduction in LS predicted future decreases in spatial cognition, processing speed, and verbal WM (| d | = 0.150–0.354). Five waves of assessment occurred across 23 years. Thus, we used bivariate dual latent change score modeling to test within-person change-to-future change relations between LS and cognition.Ĭommunity adults completed in-person tests of verbal working memory (WM), processing speed, spatial cognition, and an LS self-report. However, most studies have been cross-sectional, thereby precluding causal inferences. Within-person growth in life satisfaction (LS) can protect against declines in cognitive functioning, and, conversely, over time.

Digit span