Memory span measured by the spatial span tests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery in a group of Brazilian children and adolescents

Abstract

The neuropsychological tests of spatial span are designed to measure attention and working memory. The version of the spatial span test in the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) evaluates these functions through the recall of sequences of spatial locations presented to the subject.ObjectiveThe present study investigated how age, gender and educational level might affect the performance of the non-verbal system.MethodsA total of 60 children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years were assessed (25 males and 35 females).ResultsThe results showed no gender differences in test performance. Children with six or more years of education showed better performance than children with less than three years of education. Older children had more schooling and thus were able to recall a greater number of items. Span length values proved similar to a previous large normative study which also employed the CANTAB Spatial Span (De Luca et al., 2003).ConclusionThe similarity in performance of the Brazilian children and adolescents studied and the group of Australian participants examined by the cited authors, despite the socio-cultural and economical differences, points to the suitability of the task for the assessment of attention and working memory in Brazilian children.

Sex differences in visual-spatial working memory: A meta-analysis

“…However, visual-spatial working memory tasks also are used widely for assessment and theory building in clinical (AlonsoRecio, Martín-Plasencia, Loeches-Alonso, & SerranoRodrigues, 2014;Barrett, Kelly, Bell, & King, 2008), developmental (Almela, van der Meij, Hidalgo, Villada, & Salvador, 2012Teixeira, Zachi, Roque, Taub, & Ventura, 2011), and purely experimental settings (Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa, & Lovelace, 2006;Martin & Chaudry, 2014). Thus, visual-spatial working memory applies to many contexts and knowing whether it produces sex differences has important implications for how data are interpreted in these various contexts.…”

Influence of schooling and age on cognitive performance in healthy older adults

“…Previous findings were limited to data from multiple sclerosis patients, Duchenne muscle dystrophy patients and normal children (16,17). To the best of our knowledge, there is no neuropsychological study using CANTAB to assess influence of schooling on age-related cognitive decline in the Brazilian population.…”

Obesity and Memory

“…[17] Female obese children have better scores in word memorization test compared to male obese andthe results are in line with some of the earlier studies. [18][19][20] Some contradicting results were also reported by other studies. [21,22] This difference may be hypothesized that abilities to hold and manipulate information over short periods of time under goes substantial changes through the childhood years, with estimates of maximum capacity almost increases in the period between the pre-school years and early adolescence.…”