Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis.
Recall response durations were used to clarify processing in working-memory tasks. Experiment 1 examined children's performance in reading span, a task in which sentences were processed and the final word of each sentence was retained for subsequent recall. Experiment 2 examined the development of listening-, counting-, and digit-span task performance. Responses were much longer in the reading-and listening-span tasks than in the other span tasks, suggesting that participants in sentence-based span tasks take time to retrieve the semantic or linguistic structure as cues to recall of the sentence-final words. Response durations in working-memory tasks helped to predict academic skill and achievement, largely separate from the contributions of the memory spans themselves. Response durations thus are important in the interpretation of span task performance.
Cowan
Nelson
N
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 210 McAlester Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA. CowanN@missouri.edu
Towse
John N
JN
Hamilton
Zoë
Z
Saults
J Scott
JS
Elliott
Emily M
EM
Lacey
Jebby F
JF
Moreno
Matthew V
MV
Hitch
Graham J
GJ
D002648:Child; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary