Visual and phonological components of working memory in children

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Young children primarily use visual working memory, while older children predominantly use phonological working memory for object recall.
• Previous research indicates a shift in working memory reliance from visual to phonological components with age.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the extent to which older children utilize visual working memory alongside their dominant phonological working memory.
• To examine the interplay between visual and phonological components in working memory for older children.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted with 11-year-old children using visual recall tasks involving drawings of objects.
• Articulatory suppression and post-list tasks (auditory-verbal, visual, or mixed-modality) were employed to differentiate the roles of phonological and visual working memory.
• Memory performance was assessed based on recall accuracy and sensitivity to phonemic and visual similarities.

Main Results:

• Recall was sensitive to visual similarity when phonological coding was suppressed, indicating visual working memory involvement.
• A visual post-list task disrupted recall more significantly under suppression, particularly for the most recent item.
• A mixed-modality task showed greater interference than an auditory-verbal task when suppression was absent, affecting the final item.

Conclusions:

• Eleven-year-olds exhibit a small but reliable contribution from visual working memory in recall tasks.
• Visual working memory in older children is sensitive to visual similarity and contributes to a recency effect for the last item presented.
• The use of visual working memory in older children is often masked by the more dominant phonological component.