Working memory in young children: evidence for modality-specificity and implications for cerebral reorganization in...

Digit span (DS) and visual-spatial memory span (VMS) tasks have been considered indices of auditory and visual spatial processing, respectively, often classified as "primary memory" or "attention". There has been limited evidence for their modality specificity, however. We present two children who showed visual spatial processing deficiencies (including VMS) and non-dominant manual inefficiency with normal visual-spatial perception, auditory-verbal processing and dominant fine manual skills. These children support a distinction between auditory and visual-spatial memory span. These findings are discussed with regard to a hypothesis that the unique expression of VMS is time-limited, that visual-spatial processing becomes more verbalized as children learn to read and that these behavioral changes produce a lateral shift in cortical processing of visual spatial information.