Verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children: are they separable?

By Tracy Packiam Alloway, Susan E. Gathercole *, Susan J. Pickering. 2006

959 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study explored the structure of verbal and visuospatial short-term and working memory in children between ages 4 and 11 years. Multiple tasks measuring 4 different memory components were used to capture the cognitive processes underlying working memory. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the processing component of working memory tasks was supported by a common resource pool, while storage aspects depend on domain-specific verbal and visuospatial resources. This model is largely stable across this developmental period, although some evidence exists that the links between the domain-specific visuospatial construct and the domain-general processing construct were higher in the 4- to- 6-year age group. The data also suggest that all working memory components are in place by 4 years of age.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment. (2010, positive): “Although working memory can be tested reliably from as young as 4 years of age (Alloway, Gath-ercole, Willis, & Adams, 2004), performance on working memory tasks is subject to large degrees of individual variation (Alloway & Gathercole, 2006).”
Does Working Memory Training Transfer? A Meta-Analysis Including Training Conditions as Moderators (2015, background): “In the digit span task, participants have to recall a series of spoken digits in the same (forward) or reverse (backward) condition order presented (Alloway et al., 2006).”
The relationship between visuospatial sketchpad capacity and children's mathematical skills (2008, background): “This is especially true for children, where performance on VSSP tasks correlates highly with performance on executive tasks (Alloway, Gathercole, & Pickering, 2006 ).”
The differential role of verbal and visuospatial working memory in mathematics and reading (2018, positive): “This task can be considered as a complex working memory task in children (Alloway, Gathercole, & Pickering, 2006; Gathercole et al., 2006).”
A working memory, not bilingual advantage, in controlled attention (2010, background): “Instead it is more consistent with the view of domain-specific constructs for verbal and visuospatial memory measures (Alloway, Gathercole, and Pickering 2006 ; Miyake et al.”