title: Age-related differences in working memory updating components.
abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate possible age-related changes throughout childhood and adolescence in different component processes of working memory updating (WMU): retrieval, transformation, and substitution. A set of numerical WMU tasks was administered to four age groups (8-, 11-, 14-, and 21-year-olds). To isolate the effect of each of the WMU components, participants performed different versions of a task that included different combinations of the WMU components. The results showed an expected overall decrease in response times and an increase in accuracy performance with age. Most important, specific age-related changes in the retrieval component were found, demonstrating that the effect of retrieval on accuracy was larger in children than in adolescents or young adults. These findings indicate that the availability of representations from outside the focus of attention may change with age. Thus, the retrieval component of updating could contribute to the age-related changes observed in the performance of many updating tasks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jaén, 23071 Jaén, Spain.
authors.forename: Rocío
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Linares
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Behavior, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain.
authors.forename: M Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Bajo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Jaén, 23071 Jaén, Spain. Electronic address: spelegri@ujaen.es.
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pelegrina
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Age-related changes in updating children adolescents; Working memory; Working memory development; Working memory retrieval; Working memory updating; Working memory updating development