Children's and adults' visuospatial memory: the game concentration

Concentration, a very popular memory game, requires players to maintain a large amount of visuospatial information. Game performance was investigated in a controlled way with 80 5- to 10-year-old children and 32 adults. In overall performance, 5- to 10-year-old children did not differ, but adults outperformed them. Several indicators were derived on strategic behavior and visuospatial memory aspects in the game. Compared with younger children, 10-year-olds and adults were more efficient in information gathering, but they also showed a higher rate of information loss in the course of the game. Surprisingly, 5-year-olds had the lowest rate of spatial errors. Overall, the results contradict the anecdotal evidence of young children as experts in visuospatial memory. Implications for assumptions about age-dependent internal representations of visuospatial material are discussed.