The car-lights span task and the car-memory game, with story background, were used as behavioral and physiological measurement tools for children's visual-spatial working memory, respectively. 104 children (54 males, average age 71.11 months) living in Hsinchu City from 5 to 6 years old participated in the behavioral experiment of this study. Among them, 22 children also participated in the electrophysiological experiment. The results of the correlation analysis showed that the performance of 5- to 6-year-old children in the car-lights span task was significantly positively correlated with their performance in short-term memory, simple working memory, and complex working memory tasks, and was also significantly positively correlated with their performance of Toni non-verbal intelligence, WPPSI–IV working memory, and WPPSI–IV spatial. It showed that the car-light span task has construct validity. The performance of 5- to 6-year-old children in the car-lights span task was also significantly positively correlated with their K-scores and accuracy in the car-memory game, showing the behavior performance of children on complex span task and change detection task was consistent. In the car memory games, the CDA peak amplitude of children aged 5 to 6 showed the effect of memory load. It is observed that whether it is in the P7/P8 or P3/P4 brain regions when the number interval of the set size was greater than 2, the CDA peak amplitude increased significantly with the increase of the set size. These findings showed that the two tasks designed in this study were suitable as behavioral and electrophysiological measurement tools for the visual-spatial working memory of children aged 5 to 6 years old in Taiwan.
Measurement of children's working memory capacity
Sustainable Development Goals
Abstract/Objectives
Working memory capacity is a stable trait of a person. In recent years, it has become an important individual variable in the study of early childhood learning and cognitive development. In view of the fact that working memory measurement has been widely used in many research fields, an effective and standardized evaluation tool based on working memory theory will give us an opportunity to learn more about the mechanism of working memory and the relationship between working memory span and other cognitive development. This study aimed to systematically explore the development mechanism of children's visual-spatial working memory capacity from both behavioral and physiological measurements.
Results/Contributions
Keywords
change-detection paradigmcontralateral delay activityelectrophysiological measurementworking memory developmentvisual-spatial working
Contact Information
陳湘淳
hcchen2@gapp.nthu.edu.tw