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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 17, 2026

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Assessing Working Memory in Children: The Comprehensive Assessment Battery for Children – Working Memory (CABC-WM)

Published on: June 12, 2017

Exploring developmental differences in visual short-term memory and working memory.

Su Yin Ang¹, Kerry Lee

¹Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. SuYin.Ang@nie.edu.sg

Developmental Psychology

|January 8, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Younger children’s visual memory is less affected by executive load than older children’s. This suggests strategy use, not task type, explains differences in executive resource demands for visual memory tasks.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Developmental Psychology

Background:

Visuospatial short-term memory tasks engage more executive resources than phonological tasks.
It is unclear if this is due to task differences or participant experience.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of executive resources in visuospatial short-term memory.
To determine if task strategy differences explain executive resource demands.

Main Methods:

11-year-olds and 8-year-olds completed visual short-term and working memory tasks.
An executive suppression task (random number generation) was imposed during dual-task conditions.
Performance was compared between single-task and dual-task conditions.

Main Results:

11-year-olds' performance was more impaired by the suppression task than 8-year-olds'.
Younger children performed worse in single-task conditions but were less affected in dual-task conditions.
Older children's executive resources were likely overloaded by the suppression task, hindering strategy deployment.

Conclusions:

Differences in strategy deployment ability likely account for executive resource requirements in visual memory tasks.
Age-related differences in strategy use influence the impact of executive load on visuospatial memory performance.