TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schneider, Wolfgang
A1  - Niklas, Frank
T1  - Intelligence and verbal short-term memory/working memory: their interrelationships from childhood to young adulthood and their impact on academic achievement
JF  - Journal of Intelligence
N2  - Although recent developmental studies exploring the predictive power of intelligence and working memory (WM) for educational achievement in children have provided evidence for the importance of both variables, findings concerning the relative impact of IQ and WM on achievement have been inconsistent. Whereas IQ has been identified as the major predictor variable in a few studies, results from several other developmental investigations suggest that WM may be the stronger predictor of academic achievement. In the present study, data from the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC) were used to explore this issue further. The secondary data analysis included data from about 200 participants whose IQ and WM was first assessed at the age of six and repeatedly measured until the ages of 18 and 23. Measures of reading, spelling, and math were also repeatedly assessed for this age range. Both regression analyses based on observed variables and latent variable structural equation modeling (SEM) were carried out to explore whether the predictive power of IQ and WM would differ as a function of time point of measurement (i.e., early vs. late assessment). As a main result of various regression analyses, IQ and WM turned out to be reliable predictors of academic achievement, both in early and later developmental stages, when previous domain knowledge was not included as additional predictor. The latter variable accounted for most of the variance in more comprehensive regression models, reducing the impact of both IQ and WM considerably. Findings from SEM analyses basically confirmed this outcome, indicating IQ impacts on educational achievement in the early phase, and illustrating the strong additional impact of previous domain knowledge on achievement at later stages of development.
KW  - intelligence
KW  - short-term memory
KW  - working memory
KW  - academic achievement
KW  - domain knowledge
KW  - LOGIC study
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-198004
SN  - 2079-3200
VL  - 5
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kleber, Jörg
A1  - Chen, Yi-Chun
A1  - Michels, Birgit
A1  - Saumweber, Timo
A1  - Schleyer, Michael
A1  - Kähne, Thilo
A1  - Buchner, Erich
A1  - Gerber, Bertram
T1  - Synapsin is required to "boost" memory strength for highly salient events
JF  - Learning and Memory
N2  - Synapsin is an evolutionarily conserved presynaptic phosphoprotein. It is encoded by only one gene in the Drosophila genome and is expressed throughout the nervous system. It regulates the balance between reserve and releasable vesicles, is required to maintain transmission upon heavy demand, and is essential for proper memory function at the behavioral level. Task-relevant sensorimotor functions, however, remain intact in the absence of Synapsin. Using an odor-sugar reward associative learning paradigm in larval Drosophila, we show that memory scores in mutants lacking Synapsin (syn\(^{97}\)) are lower than in wild-type animals only when more salient, higher concentrations of odor or of the sugar reward are used. Furthermore, we show that Synapsin is selectively required for larval short-term memory. Thus, without Synapsin Drosophila larvae can learn and remember, but Synapsin is required to form memories that match in strength to event salience-in particular to a high saliency of odors, of rewards, or the salient recency of an event. We further show that the residual memory scores upon a lack of Synapsin are not further decreased by an additional lack of the Sap47 protein. In combination with mass spectrometry data showing an up-regulated phosphorylation of Synapsin in the larval nervous system upon a lack of Sap47, this is suggestive of a functional interdependence of Synapsin and Sap47.
KW  - mushroom body
KW  - Kenyon cells
KW  - larval drosophila
KW  - Sap47
KW  - phosphorylation
KW  - synaptic vesicles
KW  - short-term memory
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-191440
VL  - 23
IS  - 1
ER  -