Children's and adults' visuospatial memory: the game concentration.
Concentration, a very popular memory game, requires players to maintain a large amount of visuospatial information. Game performance was investigated in a controlled way with 80 5- to 10-year-old children and 32 adults. In overall performance, 5- to 10-year-old children did not differ, but adults outperformed them. Several indicators were derived on strategic behavior and visuospatial memory aspects in the game. Compared with younger children, 10-year-olds and adults were more efficient in information gathering, but they also showed a higher rate of information loss in the course of the game. Surprisingly, 5-year-olds had the lowest rate of spatial errors. Overall, the results contradict the anecdotal evidence of young children as experts in visuospatial memory. Implications for assumptions about age-dependent internal representations of visuospatial material are discussed.
Schumann-Hengsteler
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Developmental and Educational Psychology, Catholic University of Echstät, Germany.
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D012153:Retention, Psychology