The Development of Working Memory: Exploring the Complementarity of Two Models

Abstract

The aim of the paper was to further explore the complementarity of the working memory models postulated by Pascual-Leone and Baddeley. Five-, six-, eight-and nine-yearold children were assessed on two working memory tasks, which have frequently been used within the respective streams of research: the Mr. Peanut task and the Corsi blocks task.Results indicated a developmental increase in spatial short-term memory for both tasks.Concurrent spatial suppression reduced performance on the two tasks in all four age groups.By contrast, articulatory suppression only interfered with recall on the Mr. Peanut task, and only in the older children. The two models were shown to make their own specific contribution to the interpretation of the data, attesting to their complementarity. PascualLeone's theory offered a clear explanation of the results concerning the central aspects of working memory, i.e. the stepwise age-related increase in performance, whereas Baddeley's model provided a convincing account of the findings regarding the peripheral phonological and visuo-spatial components, i.e. the effects of articulatory and spatial suppression.

Strategies in subtraction problem solving in children

“…Testing was terminated at this point. Each experimental series correctly recalled was given a score of one-third, and the thirds were added together to provide a span score (Barrouillet, Bernardin, & Camos, 2004;Kemps, De Rammelaere, & Desmet, 2000;Smith & Scholey, 1992). For example, the correct recall of all three series of one and two items and of two three-item series resulted in a span of 2.67 ([3 + 3 + 2 ] Â 1/3).…”

Age-Group Differences in Set-Switching and Set-Maintenance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

“…The developmental trend for Working Memory is similar to the age-group differences found in earlier studies using the Corsi blocks test (a test with a similar format as the Tic Tac Toe test). These studies showed that adult levels of performance are not reached until adolescence (Hitch, Halliday, Dodd, & Littler, 1989;Issacs & Vargha-Khadem, 1989;Kemps, De Rammelaere, & Desmet, 2000;Wilson, Scott, & Power, 1987).…”

What makes working memory spans so predictive of high-level cognition?

“…Testing was terminated at this point. Each correctly recalled set counted as one third, and the thirds were added up to provide a span score (Kemps, De Rammelaere, & Desmet, 2000;Smith & Scholey, 1992). For example, the correct recall of all the sets of one, two, and three items, of two sets of four items, and of one set of five items resulted in a span of 4 [(3 ϩ 3 ϩ 3 ϩ 2 ϩ 1) ϫ 1/3].…”