Memory Development in Early Childhood: Encoding Process in a Spatial Task

Abstract

A new kind of spatial task was devised to provide a description of the development of mnemonic strategy in early childhood. Five kinds of vertical arrays of drawings differing only in left-right orientation were presented one by one. Children at ages 5, 6, 7, and 9 years were asked to reconstruct the model. Most of the preschoolers succeeded only with those arrays in which drawings in the same orientation were juxtaposed. Memory for the most complicated array was not accurate enough until age 9. During the study, the oldest children usually verbalized the orientations as a sequence or the positions of the drawings in each orientation distinctively. This was interpreted as indicating that only the oldest children executed the sophisticated encoding strategies that integrate information on the orientation and position. Analysis of children's answers to the question about how to memorize revealed that awareness of using a strategy emerged at age 7 and grew clear by age 9.

Verbal and visuospatial working memory development and deficits in children and adolescents with schizophrenia

“…Because WkM continues to develop into early adulthood, 21–25 and because this time frame corresponds to the peak age of onset for schizophrenia, understanding the developmental trajectory of WkM in relation to the onset of schizophrenia may provide clues to nature of the cognitive impairment or the developmental psychopathology of the disorder. For example, because encoding processes are thought to show an earlier developmental plateau than WkM processes, 26 impairments in encoding would be less likely to show developmental trends. Indeed, directly comparing adolescents and adults with schizophrenia, adolescents have been found to have greater WkM deficits than adults with schizophrenia 5 .…”

“…Both tasks were adaptations of the Sternberg Item Recognition Paradigm (SIRP) 33,34 and manipulated WkM load; however, one task evaluated verbal WkM, and the other visuospatial WkM load. Because encoding has been shown to emerge early in development, 26 and because studies of adults with schizophrenia show encoding abnormalities, we predicted that patients with EOS would demonstrate abnormalities in encoding on both verbal and visuospatial tasks during WkM performance. These encoding abnormalities would be identified by equal deficits in patients compared with controls at each of the three WkM loads.…”

Relations between measures of attention and memory in the assessment of children with attentional difficulties

“…An example of those types of improvements is the finding that adolescents aged 16-19 years performed more effectively and efficiently on tasks of short-term memory which included an intervening distractor task, than younger adolescents aged 12-14 years (Ryan, 1990). Other investigations have found similar age-related competencies in visual-spatial and verbal working memory (e.g., Swanson, 1996) and in use of mnemonic strategies for information retrieval (Ackerman, 1996;Hashimoto, 1991). These findings have significant implications for the development of tests of memory for children and adolescents, which will be discussed in the next section.…”

Η Εξελιξη Της Ικανοτητας Των Εννοιων Χωρου Σε Παιδια Νοητικως Καθυστερημενα Καινοητικως Ομαλα

“…Τα νεότερα παιδιά φαίνεται να παρουσιάζουν χαμηλότερες επιδόσεις ως προς την αναγνώριση της ανάκλησης της θέσης των αντικειμένων στο χώρο σε σχέση με τα μεγαλύτερα παιδιά (Park & James, 1983• Walker, Hitch, Doyle, & Porter, 1994. Ως προς την εκτέλεση, τα πεντάχρονα παιδιά έκαναν περισσότερα λάθη σε σχέση με τα εξάχρονα, επτάχρονα και εννιάχρονα παιδιά (Hashimoto, 1991)• τα τετράχρονα από τα οκτάχρονα (Schumann-Hengsteier, 1992).…”

“…Απ' την άλλη, τα εξελικτικά δεδομένα είναι ασυνεπή. Έτσι, σύμφωνα με κάποιους ερευνητές (Mandler et al, 1977• Von Wright et al, 1975, η κωδικοποίηση των πληροφοριών είναι ανεξάρτητη της σκόπιμης μάθησης• κατ' άλλους η χρονική ηλικία επηρεάζει το επίπεδο επίδοσης της οπτικοχωρικής μνήμης (Hashimoto, 1991• Park & James, 1983• Schumann-Hengsteier, 1992-Walker et al, 1994, ενώ σύμφωνα με άλλους το επίπεδο της νοημοσύνης (Naveh-Benjamin, 1987• Zucco et al, 1995.…”