What’s the object of object working memory in infancy? Unraveling ‘what’ and ‘how many’

Kibbe, Melissa M.; Leslie, Alan M.

doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2013.05.001

Cited by 57 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…The development is characterized by alternating periods of rapid and more continuous growth, with a first important developmental spurt occurring between the ages of 2–8 (Hongwanishkul et al, 2005; Ganea and Harris, 2013; Kibbe and Leslie, 2013; Moher and Feigenson, 2013). This developmental pattern clearly shows parallels with the development of the prefrontal regions of the brain (Anderson, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping the Spirits Up: The Effect of Teachers’ and Parents’ Emotional Support on Children’s Working Memory Performance

et al. 2017

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Working memory, used to temporarily store and mentally manipulate information, is important for children’s learning. It is therefore valuable to understand which (contextual) factors promote or hinder working memory performance. Recent research shows positive associations between positive parent–child and teacher–student interactions and working memory performance and development. However, no study has yet experimentally investigated how parents and teachers affect working memory performance. Based on attachment theory, the current study investigated the role of parent and teacher emotional support in promoting working memory performance by buffering the negative effect of social stress. Questionnaires and an experimental session were completed by 170 children from grade 1 to 2 (Mage = 7 years 6 months, SD = 7 months). Questionnaires were used to assess children’s perceptions of the teacher–student and parent–child relationship. During an experimental session, working memory was measured with the Corsi task backward (Milner, 1971) in a pre- and post-test design. In-between the tests stress was induced in the children using the Cyberball paradigm (Williams et al., 2000). Emotional support was manipulated (between-subjects) through an audio message (either a weather report, a supportive message of a stranger, a supportive message of a parent, or a supportive message of a teacher). Results of repeated measures ANOVA showed no clear effect of the stress induction. Nevertheless, an effect of parent and teacher support was found and depended on the quality of the parent–child relationship. When children had a positive relationship with their parent, support of parents and teachers had little effect on working memory performance. When children had a negative relationship with their parent, a supportive message of that parent decreased working memory performance, while a supportive message from the teacher increased performance. In sum, the current study suggests that parents and teachers can support working memory performance by being supportive for the child. Teacher support is most effective when the child has a negative relationship with the parent. These insights can give direction to specific measures aimed at preventing and resolving working memory problems and related issues.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping the Spirits Up: The Effect of Teachers’ and Parents’ Emotional Support on Children’s Working Memory Performance

et al. 2017

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“…Kibbe & Leslie (2013), on the other hand, suggest that infants are able to keep track of the specific shapes presented at 2 locations by the age of 9 months, and are able to keep track of the shapes presented at 3 locations by 12 months. This conclusion is based on a task in which two or three simple shapes (triangle, square, or circular disc) are placed behind barriers and then one of these is revealed, with looking time as the dependent measure.…”

Section: Development Of Working Memory Capacity In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Keeping track of the binding between shape and location is difficult even for adults (e.g., Cowan, Blume, & Saults, 2013), so much so that this finding suggests near-adult-like performance by 12 months unless the difference can be attributed to differences between the procedures used in the infant and adult studies. One potential limitation of the Kibbe and Leslie (2013) finding is that infants were always tested on the second of three locations. It is possible that infants allocated most of their attention to that location after the first trial, and therefore did not have to store in mind all three locations in order to notice many of the changes in the second location.…”

Section: Development Of Working Memory Capacity In Infancymentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Objects in Working Memory

Cowan

2017

Advances in Child Development and Behavior

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Working memory is the small amount of information that we hold in mind and use to carry out cognitive processes such as language comprehension and production, problem-solving, and decision-making. In order to understand cognitive development, it would be helpful to know whether working memory increases in capacity with development and, if so, how and why. I will focus on two major stumbling blocks toward understanding working memory development, namely that (1) many potentially relevant aspects of the mind change in parallel during development, obscuring the role of any one change; and (2) one cannot use the same test procedure from infancy to adulthood, complicating comparisons across age groups. With regard to the first stumbling block, the parallel development of different aspects of the mind, we discuss research in which attempts were made to hold constant some factors (knowledge, strategies, direction of attention) to investigate whether developmental differences remain. With regard to the second stumbling block, procedural differences in tests at different age groups, I suggest ways in which the results might be reconciled across procedures. I highlight the value of pursuing research that could distinguish between two different key hypotheses that emerge: that there is a developmental increase in the number of working memory slots (or in a basic resource that holds items in working memory), and that there is a developmental increase in the amount of detail that each of these slots can hold.

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“…In order to predict an agent's goal‐related action, infants need to attend to the features of objects in the scene, decide which object matches the agent's goal, and predict that the agent will take an action on that object. But maintaining representations of objects and their features is attentionally demanding, especially as objects move into occlusion (Kibbe & Leslie, ; see Kibbe, for a review). Furthermore, generating action predictions may also be cognitively effortful: Krogh‐Jespersen and Woodward () found that 15‐month‐old infants who made predictive gazes in a Woodward ()‐style task took longer to do so when their predictions were based on the agent's goal (e.g., the goal object in the new location) versus her previous reach direction (e.g., the old location), suggesting that generating goal‐based action predictions may impose cognitive cost (see also Krogh‐Jespersen & Woodward, ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Six‐Month‐Old Infants Predict Agents’ Goal‐Directed Actions on Occluded Objects

Applin¹,

Kibbe²

2019

Infancy

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Infants can infer agents’ goals after observing agents’ goal‐directed actions on objects and can subsequently make predictions about how agents will act on objects in the future. We investigated the representations supporting these predictions. We familiarized 6‐month‐old infants to an agent who preferentially reached for one of two featurally distinct objects following a cue. At test, the objects were sequentially occluded from the infant in the agent's presence. We asked whether infants could generate action predictions without visual access to the relevant objects by measuring whether infants shifted their gaze to the location of the agent's hidden goal object following the cue. We also examined what infants represented about the hidden objects by removing one of the occluders to reveal either the original hidden object or the unexpected other object and measuring infants’ looking time. We found that, even without visual access to the objects, infants made predictive gazes to the location of the agent's occluded goal object, but failed to represent the features of either hidden object. These results suggest that infants make goal‐based action predictions when the relevant objects in the scene are occluded, but doing so may come at the expense of maintaining representations of the objects.

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What’s the object of object working memory in infancy? Unraveling ‘what’ and ‘how many’

Cited by 57 publications

References 59 publications

Keeping the Spirits Up: The Effect of Teachers’ and Parents’ Emotional Support on Children’s Working Memory Performance

Keeping the Spirits Up: The Effect of Teachers’ and Parents’ Emotional Support on Children’s Working Memory Performance

Mental Objects in Working Memory

Six‐Month‐Old Infants Predict Agents’ Goal‐Directed Actions on Occluded Objects

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