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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

Short term memory and working memory in blind versus sighted children.

Ans Withagen¹, Astrid M L Kappers, Mathijs P J Vervloed

¹Royal Dutch Visio, Centre of Expertise for Blind and Partially Sighted People, Huizen, The Netherlands. answithagen@visio.org

Research in Developmental Disabilities

|May 7, 2013

Summary

Blind children show enhanced short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) skills compared to sighted children. This study highlights superior performance in blind children on both STM and verbal working memory tasks.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Individuals with blindness may develop enhanced memory abilities to compensate for visual impairment.
Existing research on memory compensation in blindness lacks a developmental perspective and is debated regarding specific memory aspects involved.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) capacities in 10-year-old blind and sighted children.
To investigate potential developmental differences in memory skills between blind and sighted children.

Main Methods:

Utilized digit span forward, name learning, and word span tasks to assess STM.
Employed listening span and digit span backward tasks to evaluate WM.
Compared performance between a group of 10-year-old blind children and a control group of sighted children.

Main Results:

Blind children demonstrated superior performance on both STM and WM tasks compared to their sighted peers.
Enhanced performance on digit span and other STM tasks aligns with previous research findings.
Blind children exhibited significantly better performance on verbal WM tasks, a novel finding.

Conclusions:

Blind children possess enhanced STM and WM capacities relative to sighted children.
The superior performance in blind children, particularly on verbal WM tasks, suggests effective compensatory strategies.
Further research should explore the specific cognitive strategies and task characteristics contributing to these memory enhancements in blind children.