title: Audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in 6-13 year old school children.
abstract: The neural processes subserving working memory, and brain structures underlying this system, continue to develop during childhood. We investigated the effects of age and gender on audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in a nonclinical sample of school-aged children using n-back tasks. The results showed that auditory and visual working memory performance improves with age, suggesting functional maturation of underlying cognitive processes and brain areas. The gender differences found in the performance of working memory tasks suggest a larger degree of immaturity in boys than girls at the age period of 6-10 yr. The differences observed between the mastering of auditory and visual working memory tasks may indicate that visual working memory reaches functional maturity earlier than the corresponding auditory system.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedicine/Physiology, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Virve
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vuontela
authors.forename: Maija-Riikka
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Steenari
authors.forename: Synnöve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carlson
authors.forename: Juha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Koivisto
authors.forename: Mika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fjällberg
authors.forename: Eeva T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Aronen
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012737:Sex Factors; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*