Age-related differentiation in verbal and visuospatial working memory processing in childhood
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Age‑related differentiation in verbal and visuospatial working memory processing in childhood Frances Buttelmann1,2 · Tanja Könen2,3 · Lauren V. Hadley4 · Julie‑Anne Meaney5 · Bonnie Auyeung5 · Candice C. Morey6 · Nicolas Chevalier5 · Julia Karbach2,3 Received: 26 September 2018 / Accepted: 20 June 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Working memory (WM), a key feature of the cognitive system, allows for maintaining and processing information simultaneously and in a controlled manner. WM processing continuously develops across childhood, with significant increases both in verbal and visuospatial WM. Verbal and visuospatial WM may show different developmental trajectories, as verbal (but not visuospatial) WM relies on internal verbal rehearsal, which is less developed in younger children. We examined complex VWM and VSWM performance in 125 younger (age 4–6 years) and 101 older (age 8–10 years) children. Latent multi-group modeling showed that (1) older children performed better on both verbal and visuospatial WM span tasks than younger children, (2) both age groups performed better on verbal than visuospatial WM, and (3) a model with two factors representing verbal and visuospatial WM fit the data better than a one-factor model. Importantly, the correlation between the two factors was significantly higher in younger than in older children, suggesting an age-related differentiation of verbal and spatial WM processing in middle childhood. Age-related differentiation is an important characteristic of cognitive functioning and thus the findings contribute to our general understanding of WM processing.
Introduction Working memory (WM) is a key feature of our cognitive system, allowing for the simultaneous maintenance and processing of information in a controlled manner (Baddeley and Hitch 1994). WM is an excellent predictor for academic Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01219-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Frances Buttelmann frances.buttelmann@uni‑jena.de 1
Department of Developmental Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
2
Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), Frankfurt, Germany
3
Department of Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany
4
Hearing Sciences ‑ Scottish Section, University of Nottingham, Glasgow, UK
5
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
6
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
development in childhood, as it helps children to process complex tasks, update and maintain task goals, and remember and follow instructions (Alloway et al. 2009). Consistently, WM, which improves most during the preschool period, but continues to develop well into adolescence (Gathercole et al. 2004), supports learning across academic domains, including reading and mathematics (Alloway et al. 2
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