Open research questions in Cognitive Functions and Memory

What the literature leaves open

• This focus on a small number of tests leaves open questions concerning the psychometric characteristics of a wide array of cognitive tasks useful for HFCA that can guide researchers on appropriate task selection.

  Developing a psychological test battery to measure cognition in daily life · 2026 · DOI

• Several limitations should be considered. First, the case–control design precludes causal inference; cognitive differences may precede social withdrawal or emerge because of prolonged disengagement. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify directionality. Second, multiple cognitive domains were examined, raising the possibility of type I error due to multiple comparisons. Although results showed a coherent pattern across key domains, findings should be interpreted cautiously. Third, participants were recruited from a hospital-based behavioral medicine clinic, introducing potential selection bias. While inclusion of non-patient attendees broadened representation, results may not fully generalize to community samples. Fourth, although assessors administering CANTAB were blinded to case status, psychiatric comorbidities—particularly depression and anxiety—were not statistically controlled in the cognitive analyses. As such, observed differences may reflect comorbidity-related cognitive effects rather than Hikikomori-specific mechanisms. Finally, medication status was not systematically assessed. Psychotropic medications may influence attention, processing speed, and memory, representing a potential confound. Future research should integrate neuroimaging techniques to identify neural correlates of Hikikomori-related cognitive dysfunction, examine cultural variations across populations (Kubo et al., 2022), and distinguish between primary Hikikomori and cases with psychiatric comorbidities. Given the high rates of co-occurring conditions such as social anxiety disorder, depression, and personality disorders among Hikikomori cases (Teo & Gaw, 2010), it remains unclear whether the observed cognitive deficits are specific to Hikikomori itself.

  Executive Dysfunction and Memory Impairments in Hikikomori: A Neuropsychological Case-Control Study from Oman · 2026 · DOI

• One limitation of this review relates to the underlying data- base. China accounts for 76% of the available evidence, and 88% of the studies employ cross-sectional surveys. Such a geographically concentrated and cross-sectional corpus identifies associations but provides limited basis for causal inference regarding anxiety, ADHD-like symptoms, or com- pulsive short-video use, and it offers no basis for assess- ing international generalisability. A further limitation is that heavy, severe, or excessive use was not defined uniformly across studies, which makes direct comparison across find- ings harder and means that any single threshold should be treated as study-specific rather than field-wide. Existing laboratory experiments enrol very small samples, and none incorporate objective exposure metrics (e.g., device logs or in-app analytics). Additional bias derives from the search strategy. The present review deliberately oversampled neuro-cognitive and negative-valence keywords. Terms such as ‘depres- sion’ greatly exceeded positive constructs such as ‘flour- ishing’. Nonetheless, the corpus includes a null finding for anger and a positive association with flourishing, indicat- ing that the strategy did not exclude all neutral or beneficial outcomes. Limiting the search to English- and German- language publications may have excluded region-specific studies published in other languages. Furthermore, because we replaced a full snowball strategy with only on review [32] as the primary citation benchmark, the resulting cor- pus of 42 studies is unlikely to be exhaustive. In addition, measurement heterogeneity complicated the synthesis. The researchers in the present review deployed no fewer than 15 different addiction scales, which diminishes the precision of the pooled estimate on short-video addiction. The developmental interpretation of this review is lim- ited by the scarcity of childhood studies, which may partly reflect platform age restrictions and the ethical and practical difficulties of studying potentially harmful digital exposures in younger children. Available childhood studies also often lack precise age reporting, referring broadly to “primary school students” rather than providing exact age ranges. Future childhood media research should routinely assess short-form video use and distinguish it from other activities occurring on the same platforms. For example, YouTube use should differentiate watching Shorts from watching long- form videos, while Instagram use should distinguish view- ing Reels from messaging friends or browsing image-based posts. Without this distinction, platform-level measures may obscure the specific delivery mechanics of short-form video exposure, including algorithmic curation, infinite scroll, and rapidity. Collectively, these constraints mean that the convergent patterns should be read as provisional signals rather than definitive causal evidence. The strengths of the present work lie elsewhere: this review isolates SFVs from gaming and legacy social media, foregrounds the role of their user interface design for neuroscience, and frames the evidence within a developmental biopsychosocial model to identify candidate levers for future research and practice.

  Taming the endless scroll? Short-form videos, digital routines and neurocognitive outcomes in youth · 2026 · DOI

• Even though empirical evidence is somewhat mixed and inconclusive, previous research suggests that students with DS display a relative weakness in the phonological loop.

  A comparison of working memory abilities between children with intellectual disability with non-specific aetiology and children with Down syndrome in schools for intellectual development in Germany · 2024 · DOI

• Although more recent studies have emphasized the importance of metacognition for successful prospective remembering, very little is known about the development of metacognitive abilities across the lifespan and their impact on PM performance.

  Prospective and Retrospective Metacognitive Judgments of Prospective Memory Performance Across the Lifespan · 2024 · DOI

• The results showed that participants generally adhered to the assigned attentional focus instruction and there was a trend that preference may affect the attentional focus effects, but the results were inconsistent regarding if attentional focus cues affected the magnitude of adherence and mental demands.

  Attentional Focus and Individuals’ Perceptions: A Systematic Review · 2021 · DOI

• Reversibility of cognitive impairment after medical treatment has been reported, although the restorative effects of enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP) on cognitive performance have not been studied.

  Treatment with enhanced external counterpulsation improves cognitive functions in chronic heart failure patients · 2013 · DOI

• Evidence for memory outcomes in SAH, however, was inconclusive, as studies failed to show a consistent pattern with regard to type of memory decline and side of surgery.

  Memory Outcomes Following Selective Versus Nonselective Temporal Lobe Removal: A Systematic Review · 2012 · DOI

• Many published working memory training studies suffer from design limitations (no-contact control groups, single measures of cognitive constructs), mixed results (transfer of training gains to some tasks but not others, inconsistent transfer to the same tasks across studies), and lack of theoretical grounding (identifying the mechanisms responsible for observed transfer).

  No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training: A randomized, placebo-controlled study. · 2012 · DOI

• The correlation between individual differences in working memory capacity and performance on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM) is well documented yet poorly understood.

  New rule use drives the relation between working memory capacity and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices. · 2011 · DOI

• There are a large number of studies demonstrating that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) involves different subcomponents, but there is no agreement on the identity of these dimensions.

  Evidence for different components in children's visuospatial working memory · 2007 · DOI

• The hypothesis that off-target verbosity, defined as extended speech that is lacking in focus or coherence, is mediated by an age-related decline in the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant thoughts, was evaluated in a sample of 205 community-dwelling elderly volunteers aged 61-90.

  Axging, Inhibition, and Verbosity · 1993 · DOI

• Abstract While working memory strategies are well documented in adults, little is known about the use and effectiveness of these strategies in children.

  Working memory strategies in children aged 7–10 years · 2026 · DOI

• Human factor aware MMSE? hMMSE Human factors: Gender,Age,Educa(cid:2)on,Prima ry/Test language……

  Human factor integrated MMSE for improved cognitive screening · 2026 · DOI

• Equity considerations should be explicit: access and benefit should be examined across roles and posting locations to avoid concentrating effects in already-resourced units.

  Metacognitive Therapy as an Acceptability Bridge for Military Mental Health: A Prevention-Oriented Framework · 2026 · DOI

• Prospective memory research often assumes that unfulfilled intentions reflect memory failures, but the reasons behind self-reported daily intention non-completion remain underexplored.

  Why do we forget?—A mixed-method investigation of reasons for everyday prospective memory failures · 2026 · DOI

• An open question is whether metacognitive capacity is domain-general, akin to a conductor overseeing various sections of an orchestra, or whether it is inherently coupled with each domain, resembling a collection of specialized musical directors for each instrument group.

  Domain generality in metacognitive ability: A confirmatory study across visual perception, episodic memory, and semantic memory. · 2025 · DOI

• Successfully overriding intuitive responses is posited to rely on, in part, trait-like attributes known as thinking dispositions, though a causal link has not been established.

  Thinking disposition education improves cognitive reflection: Experimental results from an intervention study · 2024 · DOI

• Yet the assessment of stimulus awareness is a difficult issue in masked priming studies; there is no standard for what constitutes participants’ conscious “awareness” nor what measure is best to assess awareness.

  Ignorance Is Not Bliss: On Issues Measuring the Awareness of Suboptimal Stimuli · 2024 · DOI

• We argue that in a demanding and rapidly changing modern world, between-individual analysis of single-occasion cognitive test scores does not account for the full range of within-individual cognitive performance variation that is implicated in successful typical cognitive performance.

  Within-Individual Variation in Cognitive Performance Is Not Noise: Why and How Cognitive Assessments Should Examine Within-Person Performance · 2023 · DOI

• These mixed findings may be the result of using different neuropsychological tests, tests with poor psychometric properties, and/or testing individuals in a context that drastically differs from their own homes.

  Attention, response inhibition, and hoarding: A neuropsychological examination · 2023 · DOI

• In terms of discriminant validity, results of Study 1 indicated that the postulated sub-components were insufficient to explain a large amount of variance in working memory span tasks, in Study 2 the same was demonstrated for reasoning tasks.

  Towards a Process Model of Sustained Attention Tests · 2019 · DOI

• BACKGROUND: Although there is general consensus that taking the eyes off the forward roadway significantly impairs most aspects of driving, the effects of primarily cognitively loading tasks on driving performance are not well understood.

  Effects of Cognitive Load on Driving Performance: The Cognitive Control Hypothesis · 2017 · DOI

• PURPOSE: Considerable research supports the motor-learning advantage associated with an external focus of attention; however, very few studies have attempted to generalize these findings to children especially with attentional focus feedback.

  External-Focus Feedback Benefits Free-Throw Learning in Children · 2015 · DOI

• Whereas non–planning impulsiveness was also related to using fewer prospective memory–aiding strategies, mediation analyses showed that use of these strategies does not account for any of the detected relationships.

  Quick to Act, Quick to Forget: The Link between Impulsiveness and Prospective Memory · 2013 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Cognitive Functions and Memory

• Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. · Developmental Psychology · 2012 · 1,351 citations
• The Power of Testing Memory: Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice · Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2006 · 1,345 citations
• Is working memory training effective? · Psychological Bulletin · 2012 · 796 citations
• No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training: A randomized, placebo-controlled study. · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2012 · 470 citations
• Aging and inhibition: Beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. · Psychology and Aging · 1994 · 429 citations
• Pupillary responses index cognitive resource limitations · Psychophysiology · 1996 · 359 citations
• Reliability and Validity of Ambulatory Cognitive Assessments · Assessment · 2016 · 299 citations
• Effects of Cognitive Load on Driving Performance: The Cognitive Control Hypothesis · Human Factors The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society · 2017 · 253 citations
• Sensitivity and Specificity of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Modified for Individuals who are Visually Impaired · Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness · 2010 · 217 citations
• Working Memory Maturation · Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2016 · 199 citations

Most recent work

• Cognitive offloading reduces internal memory processing in children · Scientific Reports · 2026
• The functional neuroanatomy of event-based and time-based prospective memory, and its improvement · Communications Biology · 2026
• Performance Invalidity is Associated with Lower Test of Premorbid Functioning IQ Estimates in Performance-Based Versus Demographics-Based Prediction Models: Implications for Neuropsychological Practice and Research · Psychological Injury and Law · 2026
• The Impact of Cognitive Load and Encoding Strategies on Prospective Memory in Children with ADHD: Performance and Processing Differences · medRxiv · 2026
• Eye‐Tracking‐Based Cognitive Assessment and Memory Decline: Need for Clinically Anchored Endpoints · Geriatrics & Gerontology International · 2026
• Supplemental Material for Validation of the Prospective Memory Concerns Questionnaire Informant Scale (PMCQi): How Personality and Self/Proxy Relationships Influence Prospective Memory Ratings · Psychological Assessment · 2026
• Do individual differences in cognitive ability or personality predict noticing in inattentional blindness tasks? · Royal Society Open Science · 2026
• Age-related changes in saccade behavior · Scientific Reports · 2026
• Taming the endless scroll? Short-form videos, digital routines and neurocognitive outcomes in youth · European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026
• Metacognitive training facilitates optimal cognitive offloading · Cognitive Research Principles and Implications · 2026

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