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Related Experiment Videos

Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis.

Nelson Cowan1, John N Towse, Zoë Hamilton

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 210 McAlester Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA. CowanN@missouri.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. General
|March 27, 2003
PubMed
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Response times in working memory tasks reveal processing insights. Longer durations in sentence-based tasks suggest semantic retrieval, impacting academic skills beyond memory span alone.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Working memory tasks are crucial for understanding cognitive processing.
  • Response durations offer a nuanced measure of cognitive effort.
  • Previous research has focused on memory span accuracy, with less attention to response times.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of response durations in working memory tasks.
  • To differentiate processing demands in various span tasks (reading, listening, counting, digit).
  • To determine if response durations predict academic achievement independently of memory span measures.

Main Methods:

  • Experiment 1: Assessed children's performance in a reading span task, focusing on sentence processing and word recall.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Experiment 2: Examined developmental changes in listening span, counting span, and digit span tasks.
  • Measured recall response durations across all tasks.

    • Main Results:

    • Response durations were significantly longer in reading and listening span tasks compared to counting and digit span tasks.
    • This suggests that sentence-based tasks require additional time for semantic or linguistic cue retrieval.
    • Response durations were predictive of academic skill and achievement, independent of memory span capacity.

    Conclusions:

    • Response durations provide valuable insights into the cognitive processes underlying working memory tasks.
    • The findings highlight the importance of considering processing time, not just accuracy, in memory assessments.
    • Understanding response durations can refine interpretations of working memory performance and its relation to academic outcomes.