ERIC Number: EJ1169014
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Mar
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0165-0254
EISSN: N/A
Developmental Improvement in Strategies to Maintain Verbal Information in Working Memory
Oftinger, Anne-Laure; Camos, Valérie
International Journal of Behavioral Development, v42 n2 p182-191 Mar 2018
Although it has been proposed that maintenance of verbal information in adults' working memory relies on two strategies, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, little is known about the interplay of these strategies in children. To examine strategy changes around the age of seven, children were asked to maintain digits during a retention interval introduced between encoding and recall. In Experiment 1, this interval was either unfilled in a delayed span task or filled with an attention-demanding task in a Brown-Peterson task. This concurrent task was either silent or aloud to vary the availability of rehearsal. Experiment 2 introduced variation in the attentional demand of the concurrent task, and an independent concurrent articulation. As predicted, recall performance was better in older children, but was reduced under concurrent articulation or when attention was less available, bringing further evidence in favor of two maintenance strategies. Moreover, the measure of the availability of attention for refreshing was correlated with recall performance in eight- and seven-year-olds, though only when rehearsal was impeded for seven-year-olds, but it did not correlate with six-year-olds' recall. This could suggest that rehearsal is the default strategy in young children who can adaptively switch to refreshing when articulatory processes are unavailable.
Descriptors: Short Term Memory, Adults, Foreign Countries, Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Young Children, Children, Intelligence Tests, Recall (Psychology), Statistical Analysis, Attention, Correlation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Kindergarten
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Switzerland
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A