Age-related change in visual working memory: a study of 55,753 participants aged 8-75

Visual working memory (VWM) abilities of 55,753 individuals between the ages of 8 and 75 were assessed to provide the most fine-grain analysis of age-related change in VWM to date. Results showed that VWM changes throughout the lifespan, peaking at age 20. A sharp linear decline follows that is so severe that by age 55, adults possess poorer immediate visual memory than 8 and 9 year olds. These developmental changes were largely explained by changing VWM capacity coupled with small short-term visual feature binding difficulties among children and older adults.