Visual working memory continues to develop through adolescence

Abstract

The capacity of visual working memory (VWM) refers to the amount of visual information that can be maintained in mind at once, readily accessible for ongoing tasks. In healthy young adults, the capacity limit of VWM corresponds to about three simple objects. While some researchers argued that VWM capacity becomes adult-like in early years of life, others claimed that the capacity of VWM continues to develop beyond middle childhood. Here we assessed whether VWM capacity reaches adult levels in adolescence. Using an adaptation of the visual change detection task, we measured VWM capacity estimates in 13-year-olds, 16-year-olds, and young adults. We tested whether the capacity estimates observed in early or later years of adolescence were comparable to the estimates obtained from adults. Our results demonstrated that the capacity of VWM continues to develop throughout adolescence, not reaching adult levels even in 16-year-olds. These findings suggest that VWM capacity displays a prolonged development, similar to the protracted trajectories observed in various other aspects of cognition.

Development of Social Working Memory in Preschoolers and Its Relation to Theory of Mind

“…As such, the current study adds new evidence to the notion that WM continues developing from the 1st year of life (e.g., Riggs et al., ; Simmering, ). It is, however, worth noting that recent visual WM studies have suggested that WM capacity continues developing after 6 years old (e.g., Isbell, Fukuda, Neville, & Vogel, ); however, in Experiment 1, we found that the K value (our index of social WM capacity) had reached the level of adults (cf. Gao et al., ; Shen et al., ) at around 6 years of age.…”

Developmental improvements in the resolution and capacity of visual working memory share a common source

“…It is not clear whether other theories could accommodate our results with some modification, but at the current level of specificity, no other theory would predict the correlation presented here. Most theories have addressed only increases in capacity (e.g., Cowan et al, 2005; Isbell et al, 2015; Kharitonova et al, 2015; Riggs et al, 2006, 2011) or precision (Burnett Heyes et al, 2012) as potential developmental changes, without considering whether or how the two relate developmentally. These theories are, at the least, under-specified to address our prediction, and at most directly inconsistent with our results.…”

“…Results have shown increasing capacity estimates from early childhood through adolescence (Buss, Fox, Boas, & Spencer, 2013; Cowan et al, 2005; Isbell, Fukuda, Neville, & Vogel, 2015; Kharitonova, Winter, & Sheridan, 2015; Riggs, McTaggart, Simpson, & Freeman, 2006; Riggs, Simpson, & Potts, 2011; Simmering, 2012; Simmering et al, 2015; see Simmering, in press, for discussion of paradigms used to estimate capacity during infancy), although the magnitudes and trajectories of these estimates varies widely across paradigms (see Simmering & Perone, 2013, for related discussion). Most developmental studies have either implicitly or explicitly endorsed a slot-like view, suggesting that the number of items that can be represented increases without addressing whether there are corresponding changes in resolution (e.g., Cowan et al, 2005; Isbell et al, 2015; Kharitonova et al, 2015; Riggs et al, 2006, 2011). …”

“…As noted above, most theories of development have focused on only one characteristic of VWM representations (e.g., capacity, Cowan et al, 2005; Isbell et al, 2015; Kharitonova et al, 2015; Riggs et al, 2006, 2011; or precision, Burnett Heyes et al, 2012) and have not considered how changes in one characteristic might impact performance across behavioral tasks. For example, although Burnett Heyes et al showed that precision improved developmentally when estimating the orientation of a bar held in memory alone or with two other items, they did not discuss how these changes in precision would affect performance in the change detection task used to estimate capacity.…”

Behavioral and neural signatures of working memory in childhood

“…Working memory emerges in infancy and develops rapidly over the first year of life (16)(17)(18)(19). It continues to improve during childhood, plateaus in mid-to-late adolescence (20)(21)(22)(23)(24), and declines after age 40-50, albeit less steeply than it changed in early development (25)(26)(27)(28). Developmental gains in working memory follow improvements in attention shifting, attentional maintenance, and distractor suppression (18), whereas changes during later childhood accompany increases in domain-general processing speed and memory capacity (29)(30)(31) with developmental asymptotic performance by adolescence (32)(33)(34)(35).…”