Verbal and non-verbal working memory and achievements on National Curriculum tests at 11 and 14 years of age

By H. L. Jarvis, Susan E. Gathercole *. Educational & Child Psychology, 2003

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent research has found links between working memory and performance on National Curriculum tests. However, these studies have employed only verbal complex span tasks as measures of the central executive component of working memory. In the present study, children at Key Stages 2 and 3 of the National Curriculum (aged 11 and 14 years) were tested on measures of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad as well as both verbal and nonverbal central executive tasks. Confirmatory factor analysis identified two factors: one verbal working memory factor associated with both the phonological loop and verbal central executive tasks, and one non-verbal working memory factor associated with both the visuospatial sketchpad and non-verbal central executive tasks. Further analyses were then used to explore the relationship between working memory and National Curriculum test scores in English, mathematics and science. The results suggested that both verbal and non-verbal working memory are important predictors of National Curriculum test scores.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2f3040323ab91fecf3eb2410733908645fa7c9c2

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Citations in the corpus

The differential role of verbal and visuospatial working memory in mathematics and reading (2018, unknown): “Variations in children’s WM capacities are related to progress across many areas of academic achievement including mathematics and reading literacy (Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, 2004; Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003).”
Impact of Working Memory Constraints on Speech Monitoring in Healthy Children (2013, background): “Further, the association between the central executive and the phonological loop increases as children age, which may reflect developmental increases in processing efficiency (Gathercole et al., 2004; Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003).”
Working memory and phonological awareness as predictors of progress towards early learning goals at school entry (2005, background): “…material over short periods of time and their scholastic progress in the domains of language, mathematics, and science across the full range of school years (Bull, Johnson, & Roy, 1999; Gathercole & Pickering, 2000, 2001; Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, 2004; Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003).”
Visuospatial working memory in intuitive geometry, and in academic achievement in geometry (2013, unknown): “…in children's ability to count (Kyttälä, Aunio, Lehto, van Luit, & Hautamaki, 2003), performance in multi-digit operations (Heathcote, 1994) and nonverbal problem-solving (Rasmussen & Bisanz, 2005), and mathematical achievement (Bull et al., 2008; Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003; Maybery & Do, 2003).”
The structure of working memory from 4 to 15 years of age. (2004, methodology): “…the Table 5 absence of a direct link between the two slave systems in the Baddeley and Hitch (1974) model and with previous evidence that verbal and visuospatial short-term memory systems are separable at a range of different points in childhood (Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003; Pickering et al., 1998).”
Executive function and metacognition: Towards a unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation (2017, background): “Furthermore, developmental improvements in updating appear to slow down around the age of 12–13 years, suggesting that an individual might have reached its capacity limit around that age (Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003).”
A structural analysis of working memory and related cognitive skills in young children. (2004, background): “…based assessments of working memory , other findings indicate that verbal and spatial complex span tasks tap more or less inde - pendent factors , suggesting that there may be a domain - specific differentiation of the central executive ( Jarvis & Gathercole , 2003 ; Shah & Miyake , 1996 ) .”
Working memory across the lifespan: A cross-sectional approach (2013, background): “However, a different pattern seems to emerge in the adolescent years, where working memory capacity appears to be supported by 2 separate pools of domain-specific resources for verbal and visuo-spatial information (Jarvis & Gathercole, 2003; also Miyake, Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty, 2001).”