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J. Intell.
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The Development of Working Memory and Attention
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The Development of Working Memory and Attention

A special issue of Journal of Intelligence (ISSN 2079-3200).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2022) | Viewed by 10624

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Emily M. Elliott

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
Interests: working memory; attention; auditory distraction; the development of attention and memory in children
Dr. Angela M. AuBuchon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Boystown National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE 68131, USA
Interests: working memory; development; language; speech perception

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fluid intelligence has been linked to working memory in children, a relationship that appears to be driven primarily by components of working memory involved in processing and attentional control, as described in the reference (Engel de Abreu et al. 2010). The relationship between intelligence and working memory persists into adulthood, when the end-point structure of the working memory system has been well-modeled. Many researchers are now turning their efforts to characterizing the development of individual mechanisms within the working memory system, especially processing and attentional control mechanisms related to intelligence and academic outcomes.

This Special Issue primarily aims to identify and describe working memory mechanisms closely linked to developmental changes in intelligence as well as mechanisms that predict individual differences in intelligence during development. We are seeking contributions that advance our understanding of the development of working memory and attention in children. Under this broad theme, we invite submissions related to the development of:

  • Auditory attention;
  • Processing speed;
  • Attention control;
  • Proactive and reactive control.

Prof. Dr. Emily M. Elliott
Dr. Angela M. AuBuchon
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Intelligence is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • attention
  • working memory
  • child development
  • auditory distraction
  • rehearsal

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 1131 KiB  
Article
Working Memory Constrains Long-Term Memory in Children and Adults: Memory of Objects and Bindings
by Alicia Forsberg, Dominic Guitard, Eryn J. Adams, Duangporn Pattanakul and Nelson Cowan
J. Intell. 2023, 11(5), 94; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11050094 - 15 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2350
Abstract
We explored how individual and age-related differences in working memory (WM) capacity affected subsequent long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Unlike past studies, we tested WM and LTM not only for items, but also for item–color bindings. Our sample included 82 elementary school children and [...] Read more.
We explored how individual and age-related differences in working memory (WM) capacity affected subsequent long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Unlike past studies, we tested WM and LTM not only for items, but also for item–color bindings. Our sample included 82 elementary school children and 42 young adults. The participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items presented sequentially at varying set sizes in different colors. Later, we tested LTM for items and item–color bindings from the WM task. The WM load during encoding constrained LTM, and participants with a higher WM capacity retrieved more items in the LTM test. Even when accounting for young children’s poor item memory by considering only the items that they did remember, they exhibited an exacerbated difficulty with remembering item–color bindings in WM. Their LTM binding performance, however, as a proportion of remembered objects, was comparable to that of older children and adults. The WM binding performance was better during sub-span encoding loads, but with no clear transfer of this benefit to LTM. Overall, LTM item memory performance was constrained by individual and age-related WM limitations, but with mixed consequences for binding. We discuss the theoretical, practical, and developmental implications of this WM-to-LTM bottleneck. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Development of Working Memory and Attention)
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13 pages, 1318 KiB  
Article
Short-Term Phantom Recollection in 8–10-Year-Olds and Young Adults
by Marlène Abadie and Manon Rousselle
J. Intell. 2023, 11(4), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11040067 - 30 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1461
Abstract
Illusory conscious experience of the “presentation” of unstudied material, called phantom recollection, occurs at high levels in long-term episodic memory tests and underlies some forms of false memory. We report an experiment examining, for the first time, the presence of phantom recollection in [...] Read more.
Illusory conscious experience of the “presentation” of unstudied material, called phantom recollection, occurs at high levels in long-term episodic memory tests and underlies some forms of false memory. We report an experiment examining, for the first time, the presence of phantom recollection in a short-term working memory (WM) task in 8- to 10-year-old children and young adults. Participants studied lists of eight semantically related words and had to recognize them among unpresented distractors semantically related and unrelated to the studied words after a retention interval of a few seconds. Regardless of whether the retention interval was filled with a concurrent task that interfered with WM maintenance, the false recognition rate for related distractors was very high in both age groups, although it was higher in young adults (47%) than children (42%) and rivaled the rate of target acceptance. The conjoint recognition model of fuzzy-trace theory was used to examine memory representations underlying recognition responses. In young adults, phantom recollection underpinned half of the false memories. By contrast, in children, phantom recollection accounted for only 16% of them. These findings suggest that an increase in phantom recollection use may underlie the developmental increase in short-term false memory. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Development of Working Memory and Attention)
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14 pages, 674 KiB  
Article
Generalization of Skill for a Working Memory Recognition Procedure in Children: The Benefit of Starting with Easy Materials
by Chenye Bao and Nelson Cowan
J. Intell. 2023, 11(3), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11030056 - 17 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1517
Abstract
When children practice a new task, they need to learn both the task procedure and the materials tested. It is often unclear if improvements with practice reflect learning of the task procedure or familiarity with the materials. We sought to examine learning of [...] Read more.
When children practice a new task, they need to learn both the task procedure and the materials tested. It is often unclear if improvements with practice reflect learning of the task procedure or familiarity with the materials. We sought to examine learning of the task procedure by switching from one set of materials to another in a working memory recognition task. We recruited 70 children (34 female, M = 11.27 years, SD = 0.62, ranging from 10.08 to 12.39) in the United States who were to remember sequences of orientations and of shapes for recognition immediately following the list. Half of the children began with orientation, an easier task, and the other half began with difficult-to-name shapes, a harder task. When children began with the easier task, the acquisition of the recognition task skill in the easy condition transferred to the more difficult task, optimizing the mean performance across tasks. Transfer was less potent when children began with the more difficult task. The results showed that sufficient practice is crucial to avoid poor initial performance, which might be important for the student’s rate of progress and task engagement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Development of Working Memory and Attention)
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15 pages, 831 KiB  
Article
Stuck on the Last: The Last-Presented Benefit as an Index of Attentional Refreshing in Adolescents
by Beatrice Valentini and Evie Vergauwe
J. Intell. 2023, 11(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence11010004 - 23 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1849
Abstract
Working memory is a limited-capacity system responsible for maintaining information that is known to dramatically develop throughout childhood and adolescence. Different maintenance mechanisms are proposed to support working memory development, among which is attentional refreshing. Attentional refreshing is assumed to improve the accessibility [...] Read more.
Working memory is a limited-capacity system responsible for maintaining information that is known to dramatically develop throughout childhood and adolescence. Different maintenance mechanisms are proposed to support working memory development, among which is attentional refreshing. Attentional refreshing is assumed to improve the accessibility of working-memory representations by cycling attention from one mental representation to the other, serially. It has been suggested that the efficiency of refreshing increases between the ages of 7 and 14 years old, thereby supporting working memory development. Yet, there is not much research about refreshing in adolescence. Here, we investigate the occurrence of refreshing in 15-year-olds by using a recently-developed index, i.e., the last-presented benefit. Adolescents had to remember a list of four letters and judge whether a subsequent probe letter was present or not in the list. Reaction times to the probe were used to assess the spontaneous occurrence of refreshing. We found that, unlike young adults, 15-year-olds showed consistent speeded responses to probes matching the last-presented memory item, indicating that, in this task, adolescents did not refocus their attention away from the last memory item to initiate refreshing. Implications for working memory functioning and development are discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Development of Working Memory and Attention)
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16 pages, 2653 KiB  
Article
Pupillometry as a Window into Young Children’s Sustained Attention
by Viridiana L. Benitez and Matthew K. Robison
J. Intell. 2022, 10(4), 107; https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence10040107 - 16 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2239
Abstract
Sustained attention is critical to cognition, social competence, and academic success. Importantly, sustained attention undergoes significant development over the early childhood period. Yet, how sustained attention fluctuates over time on task has not been clearly outlined, particularly in young children. In this study, [...] Read more.
Sustained attention is critical to cognition, social competence, and academic success. Importantly, sustained attention undergoes significant development over the early childhood period. Yet, how sustained attention fluctuates over time on task has not been clearly outlined, particularly in young children. In this study, we provide a first test of whether the pupillary response can be used as an indicator of moment-to-moment sustained attention over time on task in young children. Children aged 5 to 7 years (N = 41) completed a psychomotor vigilance task, where they were asked to press a button as fast as possible at the onset of a target stimulus. We measured reaction times over the course of the task, pupil size prior to target onset (baseline pupil size), and pupil size in response to target onset (task-evoked pupil size). The results showed a stereotypical vigilance decrement in children’s response times: as time on task increased, reaction times increased. Critically, children’s task-evoked pupil size decreased over time on task, while no such change was present in baseline pupil size. These results suggest that young children’s waning sustained attention may be linked to a decrease in alertness while overall arousal is maintained. We discuss the importance of leveraging pupillometry to understand the mechanisms of sustained attention over individuals and development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Development of Working Memory and Attention)
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