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Following instructions in a virtual school: Does working memory play a role?

Agnieszka J Jaroslawska1, Susan E Gathercole2, Matthew R Logie2

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Verbal working memory is crucial for following spoken instructions over extended periods. This study found stronger links between working memory and virtual tasks than real-world ones, highlighting its role in complex instruction following.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Previous research linked working memory to following instructions, but often in simplified experimental settings.
  • Everyday instruction following involves maintaining information over longer durations and complex environments.
  • The role of working memory in more ecologically valid instruction-following scenarios remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the involvement of working memory in maintaining information for instruction following in more realistic, longer-term contexts.
  • To compare the relationship between working memory and instruction following in real-world versus virtual environments.

Main Methods:

  • Forty-two children aged 7-11 years participated.
  • Assessments included working memory tests, a real-world 3-D object instruction task, and two virtual reality instruction-following tasks (single and multi-location).
  • Tasks involved executing sequences of spoken commands in progressively complex settings.

Main Results:

  • Verbal working memory showed a significant association with all three instruction-following tasks.
  • The link between verbal working memory and instruction following was stronger in the virtual tasks compared to the real-world task.
  • Performance in multi-location virtual tasks demonstrated a particularly strong correlation with working memory capacity.

Conclusions:

  • Verbal working memory is essential for successfully following spoken instructions, especially over extended periods and in complex environments.
  • Virtual reality tasks may offer a more sensitive measure of working memory's role in complex instruction following than traditional real-world tasks.
  • These findings underscore the critical function of verbal working memory in enabling individuals to navigate and act upon sequential information in daily life.