Individual and age-related differences in children's working memory

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which age- related and individual differences in children's working memory (WM) are due to a general or task-specific capacity system. Experiment 1 correlated children's (N = 146; age range 5-19 years) verbal and visual-spatial working memory performance with various intelligence and achievement measures. The results supporting a general system were that (1) visual-spatial and verbal WM measures were significantly intercorrelated with and without age partialed out and (2) both verbal and visual-spatial WM measures were significantly correlated with diverse achievement and intelligence measures. Experiment 2 compared three age groups (N = 192; 7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds) on working memory performance tasks under initial enhanced (cued), and maintenance conditions. The results supporting a general capacity system were that (1) age-related performance differences in WM were found on all conditions and not isolated to specific processes, (2) the maintenance measures (high-load conditions) predicted the variance better in age-related performance than process measures, and (3) although individual differences in WM performance reflected two independent operations, these operations produced similar correlations to achievement within age groups. Overall, the results support a general capacity explanation of age-related and individual differences in children's WM performance.