Author(s): Jordan Hassani
Mentor(s): Sabine Doebel, Psychology
AbstractWorking memory is defined as the ability to maintain and manipulate information in mind and is considered to be a part of what makes up ‘executive functions’, which are a group of processes that support goal-directed behavior. Research has shown that working memory in childhood predicts academic achievement both concurrently and later in life. Working memory has also been shown to mediate the relation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement. Research suggests that the activities children engage in either at home or at school or elsewhere affects children’s working memory development and one study found that children’s working memory skills, as measured by a commonly used working memory task, improved more over the school year than over the summer. However, the specific ways these varying experiences support working memory development is unknown. Our goal with this project was to explore the relations between at-home learning practices and Working Memory development. To accomplish this, we aimed to collect a sample of 80 4–7-year-old children. Child participants will complete 4 different working memory tasks, all of which have been shown to be good measures of working memory in the literature. These tasks are called span tasks (digit span, letter span, concepts span, and Corsi blocks) and require the participant to repeat what the experimenter has said (or pointed to), but in backwards order (e.g., experimenter says 2, 3 -> participant says 3, 2). Parents are expected to complete a questionnaire asking for their demographic information and information regarding their child’s engagement in different at-home activities. Our goal with this study is to gain more insight into what at-home activities may encourage working memory development in these different ‘domains’ and we hope to use this knowledge to brainstorm an at-home intervention utilizing these activities to encourage working memory development.
Audio TranscriptHello! My name is Jordan and today I am going to present on my summer project for the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.
To begin, our goal with this project was to explore the relations between at-home learning practices and Working Memory development.
Working memory is defined as the ability to maintain and manipulate information in mind. It is considered to be a part of what makes up ‘executive function’, which are a group of processes that support goal-directed behavior and develop throughout childhood.
So, why is working memory so important and why did we pick it? Well, research has shown that working memory in childhood predicts academic achievement both concurrently and later in life. Working memory has also been shown to mediate the relation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement, meaning that deficits in academic achievement resulting from having a lower socioeconomic status may be somewhat ameliorated by having stronger working memory. There are also several other skills which working memory has been shown to predict, including mathematics, literacy, logical reasoning, scientific reasoning, spatial skills and even social and behavioral outcomes.
Moving on to working memory and the environment. Research on this suggests that the activities children engage in either at home or at school or elsewhere affects children’s working memory development. For example, one study found that children’s working memory skills as measured by a commonly used working memory task improved more over the school year than over the summer. However, the specific ways these varying experiences support working memory development is unknown.
To accomplish our goal of exploring the relations between at-home learning activities and working memory development, we aimed to collect a sample of 80 4–7-year-old children. Child participants that came into the lab completed 4 different working memory tasks, all of which have been shown to be good measures of working memory in the literature. The first they completed was the backwards digit span, where the experimenter says a string of digits and then asks the participant to repeat what was said, but backwards. And here we have an example of the first trial, where the experimenter said 1, 3 and the child participant was expected to say 3, 1.
The backwards letter span task and backwards concepts span task are both very similar to the digit span, but the experimenter would say letters or words instead of digits. On the slide, the examples taken from the first trial of each task are bolded, along with the ‘correct’ responses children were expected to respond with.
Child participants also complete the corsi blocks task, where the experimenter points to blocks in a string, and asks the child to point to the same blocks but in backwards order. End with: please note that each of these tasks had 10 trials total, but the task would end if a participant failed to answer correctly for two trials of the same length.
While the child is playing these different working memory games, the parent fills out a questionnaire asking for their demographic information and information regarding their child’s engagement in different at-home activities. Here we have a couple different examples of statements parents may be asked to respond to, grouped by different conceptual domains. We have created these different conceptual groupings to go along with the different WM tasks children are asked to complete – our reasoning for this is that each task may have different demands that rely on children’s experience in these different domains, so we wanted the statements to be representative of this. For example, we would expect a child that talks about sharing items equally often to perform better on the digit span task and a child that is read to often to perform better on the letter or concepts span tasks.
Because this study is still ongoing and data collection is incomplete, I do not have any data to report. Our hope with this study is to gain more insight into what at-home activities may encourage working memory development in these different ‘domains’ and we hope to use this knowledge to brainstorm an at-home intervention utilizing these activities to encourage working memory development. We decided it was important to focus purely on at-home activities because of their accessibility and because of the impact the pandemic has had on young children’s time spent at home.
To begin, our goal with this project was to explore the relations between at-home learning practices and Working Memory development.
Working memory is defined as the ability to maintain and manipulate information in mind. It is considered to be a part of what makes up ‘executive function’, which are a group of processes that support goal-directed behavior and develop throughout childhood.
So, why is working memory so important and why did we pick it? Well, research has shown that working memory in childhood predicts academic achievement both concurrently and later in life. Working memory has also been shown to mediate the relation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement, meaning that deficits in academic achievement resulting from having a lower socioeconomic status may be somewhat ameliorated by having stronger working memory. There are also several other skills which working memory has been shown to predict, including mathematics, literacy, logical reasoning, scientific reasoning, spatial skills and even social and behavioral outcomes.
Moving on to working memory and the environment. Research on this suggests that the activities children engage in either at home or at school or elsewhere affects children’s working memory development. For example, one study found that children’s working memory skills as measured by a commonly used working memory task improved more over the school year than over the summer. However, the specific ways these varying experiences support working memory development is unknown.
To accomplish our goal of exploring the relations between at-home learning activities and working memory development, we aimed to collect a sample of 80 4–7-year-old children. Child participants that came into the lab completed 4 different working memory tasks, all of which have been shown to be good measures of working memory in the literature. The first they completed was the backwards digit span, where the experimenter says a string of digits and then asks the participant to repeat what was said, but backwards. And here we have an example of the first trial, where the experimenter said 1, 3 and the child participant was expected to say 3, 1.
The backwards letter span task and backwards concepts span task are both very similar to the digit span, but the experimenter would say letters or words instead of digits. On the slide, the examples taken from the first trial of each task are bolded, along with the ‘correct’ responses children were expected to respond with.
Child participants also complete the corsi blocks task, where the experimenter points to blocks in a string, and asks the child to point to the same blocks but in backwards order. End with: please note that each of these tasks had 10 trials total, but the task would end if a participant failed to answer correctly for two trials of the same length.
While the child is playing these different working memory games, the parent fills out a questionnaire asking for their demographic information and information regarding their child’s engagement in different at-home activities. Here we have a couple different examples of statements parents may be asked to respond to, grouped by different conceptual domains. We have created these different conceptual groupings to go along with the different WM tasks children are asked to complete – our reasoning for this is that each task may have different demands that rely on children’s experience in these different domains, so we wanted the statements to be representative of this. For example, we would expect a child that talks about sharing items equally often to perform better on the digit span task and a child that is read to often to perform better on the letter or concepts span tasks.
Because this study is still ongoing and data collection is incomplete, I do not have any data to report. Our hope with this study is to gain more insight into what at-home activities may encourage working memory development in these different ‘domains’ and we hope to use this knowledge to brainstorm an at-home intervention utilizing these activities to encourage working memory development. We decided it was important to focus purely on at-home activities because of their accessibility and because of the impact the pandemic has had on young children’s time spent at home.