The effects of verbal and spatial memory load on children's processing speed

Abstract

Examining the impact of maintenance on processing speed allows us to test whether storage and processing resources are shared. Comparing these relationships in children of different ages allows further insight into whether one or multiple resources for these operations must be assumed and whether remembering is proactive throughout childhood. We tested 185 4- to 6- and 8- to 10-year-old children using adaptive complex span tasks, in which simple judgments were interleaved between to-be-remembered items. The adaptiveness of our tasks ensured that all participants frequently correctly recalled the items. If storage and processing require a single resource, and if participants serially reactivate the memoranda between processing episodes, processing response times should increase with serial position of the processing judgment within lists. We observed different within-list dynamics for each age group. Older children's processing judgments slowed gradually when more than two memory items were maintained. By contrast, younger children showed no evidence of slower processing with increasing memory load. Our results support models of working memory that assume that some common resource is responsible for verbal and spatial storage and processing. They also support the notion that remembering becomes more proactive as children mature.

Impact of memory load on processing diminishes rapidly during retention in a complex span paradigm.

“…Introducing four lead-in tone judgments clarified the cost of remembering an accumulating list of letters on judgment response times. Without lead-in judgments, we observed a nonlinear pattern of speeding and slowing on the judgments as the memory list accumulated, similarly to C. C. Morey et al (2018).…”

“…While the first tone judgment (whether it was Lead-in-4 or Load-1) was always among the slowest, the other lead-in judgments were much faster, and comparable to the average response time on baseline trials. The best model revealed by a Bayesian ANOVA estimated using the BayesFactor R package (R. D. Morey et al, 2018; Rouder et al, 2012) with lead-in condition (with lead-in, without lead-in), serial position (restricted from Load-1 to Load-7), and list length (4, 5, 6, and 7) as within-participants factors performed on log-transformed trimmed response times included main effects of lead-in condition, serial position, and an interaction between lead-in condition and serial position, BF = 5.5 · 10 70 .…”

“…However, our ability to make straightforward predictions about how judgment speed should change as the memory list accumulates is hindered because the effect of memory load on judgment speed appears nonmonotonic. C. C. Morey et al (2018) showed that in children, judgments made after presentation of the first memory item were substantially slower than judgments made after the second memory item, when participants would have been attempting to remember more information.…”

“…However, evidence of interference between memory recall and processing speed in complex span tasks is perplexingly mixed (Engle et al, 1992; Friedman & Miyake, 2004; Jarrold et al, 2011; Maehara & Saito, 2007; C. C. Morey et al, 2018; Saito & Miyake, 2004; Towse et al, 1998, 2000, 2002).…”

The Impact of Different Types of Auditory Warnings on Working Memory

“…Banbury and Jones (1999) found that speech interfered with visuospatial task performance despite being ignored. Studies have further confirmed that verbal and spatial activities interfered with each other under dual-task conditions, indicating the existence of a domain-general resource in the mental process of verbal and spatial (Vergauwe et al, 2010;Morey et al, 2018). Mobile phone use impaired driving safety, regardless of whether the phone was hand-held or hands-free (Strayer and Johnston, 2001).…”