The DOI matches its Crossref record; 191 of the 199 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 129 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get at the Essence of Cognitive Growth?
Open accessAbstract
The theoretical and practical understanding of cognitive development depends on working memory, the limited information temporarily accessible for such daily activities as language processing and problem solving. In this article, I assess many possible reasons that working memory performance improves with development. A first glance at the literature leads to the weird impression that working memory capacity reaches adult levels during infancy but then regresses during childhood. In place of that unlikely explanation, I consider how infant studies may lead to overestimates of capacity if one neglects supports that the tasks provide, compared with adult-level tasks. Further development of working memory during the school years is also considered. Many investigators have come to suspect that working memory capacity may be constant after infancy because of various factors such as developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation. With each of these factors controlled, though, working memory still improves during the school years. Suggestions are made for research to bridge the gap between infant and child developmental research, to understand the focus and control of attention in working memory and how these skills develop, and to pinpoint the nature of capacity and its development from infancy forward.
Overview
AI snapshot
Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
This review argues that working memory improves from infancy through the school years, but the apparent adult-like capacity in infancy likely reflects task supports rather than true capacity. It concludes that controlling knowledge, filtering, encoding, rehearsal, and context does not eliminate childhood working-memory gains, leaving capacity growth and attention-control growth as unresolved alternatives.
Key findings
- Working memory performance improves steadily from 4 to 15 years across many span and complex-span tasks (Gathercole et al., 2004; Figure 1).
- Infant studies suggest 10-month-olds can detect changes in 4-item arrays but not 5-item arrays, and 8-month-olds remember two unique objects with novelty looking around .60; however, these may overestimate capacity because infant procedures provide supports such as familiarity comparison.
- With confounds controlled, age differences remain: for 8 unrelated sentences, chunk access increased from about 2.5 chunks in first-grade children to about 3.5 chunks in adults, and visual array capacity improved across grades for both English letters and unfamiliar characters.
- The review cannot decide whether development is due to increased capacity (number of chunks/slots) or improved attention control/maintenance; both remain viable.
Methods
- Narrative/theoretical review of behavioral and developmental working memory literature, covering infancy and the school years.
- Reanalyzes published means (e.g., Gathercole et al., 2004, Table 1) to estimate number of items recalled, and compares studies that control knowledge, filtering, encoding/consolidation, rehearsal, and context.
- Uses capacity estimates such as Cowan’s k = S(h − f) and reviews infant looking/search procedures.
Limitations
- Stated: the capacity-growth hypothesis can seem like a “glorified null hypothesis”; the fundamental question of whether infants and adults have equivalent capacity cannot yet be answered; infant and child procedures are not directly comparable and need bridging research.
- Stated: infant procedures may overestimate capacity by neglecting task supports, while adult-like procedures may impose greater deliberate maintenance/control demands.
- Evident: as a review, it reports no new primary data and relies on cross-study comparisons; many conclusions depend on interpreting disparate tasks and age groups.
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Claims the paper makes
100 Not checked yet · 39 Own interpretation · 7 No basis given · 2 Own result
In the paper
“Clearly, there is a steady improvement in performance from 4-15 years.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Gathercole et al. (2004)
boostedcorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“The developmental trend is similar across tests, except in two cases (visual pattern span and mazes), in which developing grouping processes may steepen the age trend as older children recode items to form a”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Gathercole et al. (2004)
plainn = 2- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“There was evidence in Cowan et al. (2010), however, that the strategic filtering broke down when the number of array objects was increased to three circles and three triangles.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan et al. (2010)
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“With those children omitted, the interaction between materials and age group was eliminated.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“It was found that the number of items of a shape included in working memory varied systematically with the attention condition: the more likely it was that a shape would be tested, the more attention was allocated to it.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan et al. (2010)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“The basis of the interaction appeared to be that some of the children in the youngest age group did not know their letters well”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“The pattern of results in the 80% vs. 20% condition was replicated by Cowan, AuBuchon et al. (2011) using a slow, serial presentation of array items”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, AuBuchon et al. (2011)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“Moreover, there was an interaction between the materials and the age group.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
In the paper
“For arrays with only two items in the tested shape, this allocation of attention was just as good for children in the youngest age group (6-8 years, Grades 1 & 2) as it was for older children and adults.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan et al. (2010)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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In the paper
“they revealed a capacity of less than 1 English letter”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- It may state two separate claims as one. 40
- The quote only partly states this claim. 2
- Probably not a substantial claim. 23
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The top panel of the figure shows that, in all of the studies noted, there is evidence that adults yield estimates of the number of items stored in working memory that exceed the estimates for the children.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one. The quote only partly states this claim.
In the paper
“It was true that performance was higher for English letters than for unfamiliar characters and climbed more quickly across age groups; knowledge contributed to performance profoundly.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“The initial result was that performance improved across age groups for both types of materials.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Ricker et al. (2015)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Surprisingly, schizophrenic participants were as good as control participants at allocating attention, but nevertheless remembered far fewer bars overall.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Gold et al. (2006)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
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It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Morey and Cowan (2004) showed this by administering an array memory task with several different secondary tasks during the retention interval between the array of colored squares and the test probe. Recitation of the participant’s own 7-digit telephone number during the retention interval had no effect on performance, whereas recitation from memory of a just-seen random 7-digit number did”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Morey and Cowan (2004)
boosteddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Cowan, Saults, and Morey (2006) found effects of suppression less vulnerable to the psychometric concerns because a complex pattern of results differed between 9-10-year old children versus adults. Suppression in the adults made the pattern change strikingly to match the children’s pattern, but the adults’ results nevertheless occurred at a somewhat higher performance level.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Saults, and Morey (2006)
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“The pattern of development was essentially the same in each condition: there was no age difference in the allocation of attention that favored the 80%-tested shape over the 20%-tested shape, but there was a large developmental increase in the number of items in working memory.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, AuBuchon et al. (2011)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Children who were 5 years old showed the same pattern only when the task required that the picture names be pronounced or when the experimenter pronounced the names.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Hitch et al. (1991)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Many aspects of cognition vary depending on the working memory abilities of the child, and are compromised in children with various learning or processing challenges that can affect language comprehension and production, reading, mathematics, and problem-solving”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > The Issue of Working Memory Development
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Elliott et al., 2005
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, 2014
- Not checked yetcites Cowan & Alloway, 2009
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“suggesting that most of the developmental change came from improvements in chunking efficiency.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Dempster (1978)
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“Dempster (1978) created word series with low word-to-word association values to limit chunking. Whereas digits yielded a 24% increase in span during the elementary school years, the specially-constructed word set yielded only a 5% increase”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Dempster (1978)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Even when children varied in their strategies for approaching a problem (e.g., Siegler, 1994), strategy selection and execution could be thought of as dependent on working memory capacity.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Siegler, 1994
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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Probably not a substantial claim.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Such findings were handled more gracefully by neo-Piagetian psychologists, who posited that fundamental information processing parameters like memory and processing efficiency improved with maturation.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
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- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
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Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“The chunking manipulation was successful at all ages but nevertheless did not diminish age differences in performance.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Burtis (1982)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The neo-Piagetian view would promote the idea that the growth of capacity is involved even in the conceptual, behavioral, and strategic changes that occur during infancy and early childhood”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“These are not trivial discrepancies and they require explanation; they have not been reconciled in previous work.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Task complexity and the memory requirements of the task clearly influenced performance on conceptual tests, a phenomenon called horizontal décalage (Piaget, 1977).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Piaget, 1977
boosteddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The developmental trend is similar across tests, except in two cases (visual pattern span and mazes), in which developing grouping processes may steepen the age trend as older children recode items to form a”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
hedgedconditionaln = 2- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“A complex item might be converted to more than one chunk, whereas multiple, potentially related items might be combined into a single chunk.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Better information processing in turn was said to allow more complex concepts to be comprehended, harder problems to be solved, and so on”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Burtis, 1982
- Not checked yetcites Case, 1985, 1995
- Not checked yetcites Fischer, 1980
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“The initial employment of a strategy that has promise may at first be cumbersome and attention-demanding, given that it is different from what the participant is used to but, with practice, the strategy can become less attention-demanding, and thus more helpful to performance (a change that has been documented for verbal rehearsal by Guttentag, 1984).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > Development of Working Memory Capacity?
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Guttentag, 1984
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The progression of infant findings suggests that object-file representations are quite basic but that the details of these objects are filled in with maturation in infancy.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Presumably, deliberate actions that include head-turning or eye movements as well as manual movements and speech all emanate from the focus of attention.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Nevertheless, these toddlers did pass the surprise test measured by looking time as in the infant procedure (Hood, Cole-Davies, & Dias, 2003; Mash, Novak, Berthier, & Keen, 2006).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Hood, Cole-Davies, & Dias, 2003
- Not checked yetcites Mash, Novak, Berthier, & Keen, 2006
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“As I will discuss, the infant procedures may not elicit the deliberate route to the same degree as the adult procedures.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In the first, the automatic route to action, incoming stimulation is seen to be discrepant from the neural model of prior stimulation, and it attracts attention. This can occur for stimuli for which there was no prior attention.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“there is considerable work suggesting that in individuals older than about 6 years of age, the focus of attention rapidly circulates to refresh various items in turn. The number of items that can be recalled is reduced in a linear fashion as a function of the cognitive load”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Barrouillet, Portrat, & Camos, 2011
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This point needs careful scrutiny because children in the early elementary school years, tested with the adult-like procedures, seem to remember fewer items.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“Neurally and behaviorally the scope of attention, highly dependent on parietal areas of the brain, is said to be separate from the control of attention or central executive processes, highly dependent on frontal areas, with activated memory in various association areas (Cowan, 2011).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > A Brief History of Working Memory Capacity
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, 2011
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“It is in that sense that working memory is explicitly supposed to have a limited capacity.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > A Brief History of Working Memory Capacity
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Baddeley & Hitch, 1974
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“two different kinds of working memory described by Cowan (1988, 1999, 2005) are used, namely the activated subset of long-term memory, and the focus of attention”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan (1988, 1999, 2005)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
In the paper
“Second, in the deliberate route to action, attention is governed by central executive processes.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Johnson, 1995
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“However, infants and young children would not be able to use the deliberate system adequately to separate the stimulus stream into discrete events, only some of which should be used to motivate the response”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“Kibbe and Leslie (2011) found that when infants of 6 months see two objects disappear behind occluders, they are surprised when an occluder is raised and the object is missing, but not when the object that appears is the wrong one”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kibbe and Leslie (2011)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“We can conclude that either the infants in fact retained an average of slightly under 2 items in working memory, or else a different process was used by the infants to determine when to stop withdrawing objects from the box.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Miller (1956) famously discussed the fact that there is a basic limitation in the capability of working memory, to about 7 items.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > A Brief History of Working Memory Capacity
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Miller (1956)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“With lists of 3 or 4 items, short enough to be held in the focus of attention, there was very little incorrect responding on the basis of the recent lure (i.e., very little proactive interference), but much more proactive interference was obtained with longer lists of 6 or 8 items that presumably could not be held in focus.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cowan, Johnson, and Saults (2005)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The correspondence with adults’ capacity could be a coincidence, inasmuch as adults appear to have a capacity that actually reaches an asymptotic level closer to 3 items”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“According to another hypothesis, the proposed difference between infant and adult procedures is not in how many items can co-exist in the core part of working memory, but in how appropriately the contents can be controlled (cf. Kane & Engle, 2003), and thus the correct memoranda maintained, as the stimuli change across the experimental trial.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kane & Engle, 2003
plain- Asserted: fails — The authors may not put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The authors may not put it forward as true.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The developmental trend in working memory that we have seen during childhood could occur because young children are deficient compared to adults in the deliberate process of preserving items in the focus of attention while comparing them to the probe item.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
hedgedconditional- Asserted: fails — The authors may not put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The authors may not put it forward as true.
In the paper
“The pattern observed by Zosh and Feigenson (2015), in the procedure in which objects are hidden in a box and can be retrieved by the infant, also can be understood in the embedded-process view if the focus of attention can include 3 items in these infants.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Zosh and Feigenson (2015)
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one. The quote only partly states this claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The implication is that even 6-month-old children have rudimentary multiple-object representations, but not including the details of the individual objects.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > The Working Memory Capacity Growth Hypothesis
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“According to this information-maintenance hypothesis, infants of 8 or 9 months are already able to focus attention on 3 items and establish the corresponding activation of their features in memory.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“A complex item like a Chinese character or colored shape may require multiple chunks.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Theoretical and Empirical Background > A Brief History of Working Memory Capacity
hedgedconditional- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
In the paper
“They examined the ability to recall lists of ordinary, spoken, English words, and the speed of repetition of individual words within the set, finding both measures to be poorer in the children 3-6 years old than in young adults. However, when adults received unfamiliar nonsense words instead of English words, their performance on both measures resembled the children with English word stimuli.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Case et al. (1982)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Camos and Barrouillet (2011) found, moreover, that at age 6 and below the cognitive load relation did not hold and, instead, information was lost as a function of time rather than cognitive load”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Camos and Barrouillet (2011)
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“If the similarity in apparent working memory capacity of infants and adults is born out, then there is no room to anticipate developmental changes in capacity during childhood. Instead, the childhood development would have to be related to how children handle the additional demands that the adult-like procedures entail (presumably, control of working memory contents).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds. It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This finding suggested that the operational efficiency of working memory increases with familiarity with the materials, presumably accounting for the developmental increase in working memory performance.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“In contrast, low-span adults apparently did not filter out the irrelevant items when the arrays were presented and showed a pattern of brain activity that was similar for, on one hand, 2 relevant items presented along with 2 irrelevant items and, on the other hand, 4 relevant items presented alone.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Vogel et al. (2005)
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“That measure showed about .80 chunk integrity in each age group, so the developmental improvement in memory could not be explained by a change across age groups in chunk integrity.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Gilchrist, Cowan, and Naveh-Benjamin (2009)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“This finding suggests that refreshing rate is a major basis of age differences in working memory, and it could be the basis of controlled memory maintenance.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > From Infancy to Childhood: Growth and Changing Task Demands > Hypothesis of Control: Automatic and Deliberate Maintenance in Working Memory
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Chi (1978) showed that knowledge is critically important for working memory. Children (third through eighth grade, mean age 10.5 years) who were expert at chess were better able to remember chess board configurations than were naive adults, even though the usual adult superiority emerged for memory of lists of digits.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Increasing Knowledge
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Chi (1978)
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“It does not appear that the speed of encoding or consolidation can explain the age difference in the number of items stored in working memory in this procedure; the pattern of results was unchanged by the slow, serial presentation.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Encoding and Consolidation of Items in Working Memory
hedged- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Apparently, older participants have a more precise representation of the spatial layout of the studied array, and this extra context helps them locate items in the array and makes the contextual markers unnecessary to identify a probe object’s location in the array (cf. Burnett Heyes et al., 2012).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of the Reinstatement of Context
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Burnett Heyes et al., 2012
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In sum, although spatial configuration does improve with development, there is an important component of visual working memory development that cannot be attributed to configuration.”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of the Reinstatement of Context
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Thus, processing and storage shared a resource but processing efficiency was the result of a working memory difference between age groups, not the direct cause of one”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Attentional Filtering
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Cusack, Lehmann, Veldsman, & Mitchell, 2009
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“This was taken as evidence that the array is not transformed to a verbal form for retention, but that both the visual array and a random 7-digit number require a common pool of attention for their retention (for related evidence of a common attentional resource for verbal and visual processing, see Vergauwe et al., 2009).”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Vergauwe et al., 2009
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The authors state this as an assumption.
Many processes probably play some role in working memory performance.
“there is less concern here about which processes play some role in performance, and more of an assumption that many such processes probably do so.”
The authors state this as an assumption.
Manual responses in preverbal infants can be deliberate and based on central executive processes.
“it is assumed here that manual responses in preverbal infants also can be deliberate and based on central executive processes”
The authors state this as an assumption.
In the adult array change-detection procedure, memory can be accumulated across more than one trial.
“if we assume that memory can be accumulated across more than one trial”
The authors state this as an assumption.
In Gilchrist et al. (2009), each sentence would typically be represented as a single chunk, but sentence-long chunks would be retained separately in working memory.
“It was supposed that each sentence would typically be represented as a single chunk, but that the sentence-long chunks would be retained separately in working memory.”
The authors state this as an assumption.
On most trials in the Zosh and Feigenson procedure, 3 items are in working memory.
“On most trials in which it is assumed that 3 items are in working memory”
The authors state this as an assumption.
An individual has k items in working memory on each trial; if the array item at the probed location is in working memory, the individual knows whether the probe differs from the corresponding array item; if the item is not known, the participant must guess.
“The formula was based on the assumption that an individual has k items in working memory on each trial and, if the array item at the probed location is in working memory, the individual knows whether the probe differs from the corresponding array item. If the item is not known, the participant must guess.”
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“WM capacitythat is, the maximum amount of information that WM can store and manipulate -steadily increases throughout infancy and childhood up to adolescence (Cowan, 2016;Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004), both due to maturation and increase in knowledge (Cowan, 2016;Jones, Gobet, & Pine, 2007).”
From Working memory training in typically developing children: A multilevel meta-analysis (2020) · cites this paper as Cowan, 2016
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of the Reinstatement of Context
“(e.g., Brady & Tenenbaum, 2013; Jiang, Olsun, & Chun, 2000; Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003; Xu & Chun, 2007)”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > References
“94. Jiang Y Olson IR Chun MM Organization of visual short-term memory Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition 2000 26 683 702 10855426”
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > Development throughout the School Years: Controlling Confounding Factors > The Factor of Verbal Rehearsal
“(Jarrold & Citroën, 2012; Jarrold & Hall, 2013)”
§ Working Memory Maturation: Can We Get At the Essence of Cognitive Growth? > References
“91. Jarrold C Citroën R Reevaluating key evidence for the development of rehearsal: Phonological similarity effects in children are subject to proportional scaling artifacts Developmental Psychology 2013 49 837 847 22662766”
Citations
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“Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the structure of behavior.”
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“However, a chunk capacity limit can be obtained rather cleanly by curtailing articulatory processing, in which case adults can retain typically only three or four chunks (Chen & Cowan, 2009; Cowan, 2001; Cowan, Rouder, Blume, & Saults, 2012).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationDynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood
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Plans and the structure of behavior.
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“Some work, going back at least to Sperling (1960) and Phillips (1974), has focused on the transfer of information from visual sensory memory into a capacity-limited type of memory.”
Background
Research works printed but not linked: 7
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Neural Perspectives on Cognitive Control Development during Childhood and Adolescence
Crone, E. A., & Steinbeis, N. (2017) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.01.003 · Cited by 287
“Both rule-based and internalized cognitive control processes show developmental changes over time in behavioral tasks, such as protracted development of both rule-based working memory manipulation [36,66] and internalizing delay discounting [64] or giving trust [67], but these behavioral patterns are possibly associat…”
Short-term memory based on activated long-term memory: A review in response to Norris (2017).
Cowan, N. (2019) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000199 · Cited by 159
“They have been discussed with respect to capacity and dual tasks in the case of child development (e.g., Cowan, 2016) and aging (e.g., Rhodes et al., 2019).”
Self-citationWorking memory, attention and their relationship: A theoretical overview
Angelopoulou, E., & Drigas, A. S. (2021) · Research Society and Development · doi:10.33448/rsd-v10i5.15288 · Cited by 223
Adams, E. J., Nguyen, A. T., & Cowan, N. (2018) · Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools · doi:10.1044/2018_lshss-17-0114 · Cited by 180
“Cowan (2016, 2017b) summarized work addressing the question of what accounts for developmental differences in working memory.”
BackgroundSelf-citationWorking memory training in typically developing children: A multilevel meta-analysis
Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2020) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-019-01681-y · Cited by 148
“…is, the maximum amount of information that WM can store and manipulate—steadily increases throughout infancy and childhood up to adolescence (Cowan, 2016; Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004), due to both maturation and an increase in knowledge (Cowan, 2016; Jones, Gobet, &…”
BackgroundPoupard, M., Larrue, F., Sauzeon, H., & Tricot, A. (2024) · British Journal of Educational Technology · doi:10.1111/bjet.13503 · Cited by 173
The Relation Between Attention and Memory
Cowan, N., Bao, C., Bishop-Chrzanowski, B. M., Costa, A. N., Greene, N. R., Guitard, D., Li, C., Musich, M. L., & Ünal, Z. E. (2023) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-040723-012736 · Cited by 124
“Cowan (2016, 2022a) discussed various indications that even after eliminating the effects of age differences in knowledge about the task materials that would facilitate recall, WM capacity increases steadily in childhood.”
Self-citationA systematic assessment of socioeconomic status and executive functioning in early childhood
John, A. M. S., Kibbe, M. M., & Tarullo, A. R. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.003 · Cited by 107
The Nature of Verbal Short-Term Impairment in Dyslexia: The Importance of Serial Order
Majerus, S., & Cowan, N. (2016) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01522 · Cited by 84
Self-citationMorra, S., Panesi, S., Traverso, L., & Usai, M. C. (2017) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2017.11.004 · Cited by 95
Working memory development: A 50-year assessment of research and underlying theories
Cowan, N. (2022) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105075 · Cited by 95
Self-citationSelective attention, filtering, and the development of working memory
Plebanek, D. J., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2018) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.12727 · Cited by 73
“Although multiple candidate factors accounting for the development of WM are available, identifying a specific factor has proved to be elusive (Cowan, 2016).”
BackgroundAttention in working memory: attention is needed but it yearns to be free
Rhodes, S., & Cowan, N. (2018) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.13652 · Cited by 54
Self-citationShort‐term Memory in Childhood Dyslexia: Deficient Serial Order in Multiple Modalities
Cowan, N., Hogan, T. P., Alt, M., Green, S., Cabbage, K. L., Brinkley, S., & Gray, S. I. (2017) · Dyslexia · doi:10.1002/dys.1557 · Cited by 70
“Definitions of short-term or working memory vary (Logie & Cowan, 2016), but here we refer to tasks in which a certain series of materials is presented and, when the series ends, the instruction is that the participant is immediately to repeat the series or list using a well-suited response mode.”
InfluentialSelf-citationCatastrophic individuation failures in infancy: A new model and predictions.
Stavans, M., Lin, Y., Wu, D., & Renée Baillargeon, B. (2018) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/rev0000136 · Cited by 68
Sulcal depth in prefrontal cortex: a novel predictor of working memory performance
Yao, J. K., Voorhies, W. I., Miller, J. A., Bunge, S. A., & Weiner, K. S. (2022) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhac173 · Cited by 65
Mapping the Dimensions of General Intelligence: An Integrated Differential-Developmental Theory
Δημητρίου, Α., Makris, Ν., Spanoudis, G. C., Kazi, S., Shayer, M., & Kazali, E. (2018) · Human Development · doi:10.1159/000484450 · Cited by 68
“Regarding working memory, relations between progression along cognitive developmental sequences and increases in working memory do exist [Cowan, 2016; Demetriou et al., 2002].”
TechCheck-K: A Measure of Computational Thinking for Kindergarten Children
Relkin, E., & Bers, M. U. (2021) · IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) · doi:10.1109/educon46332.2021.9453926 · Cited by 60
“Previous research has found that the working memory of kindergarten age children (~5 years old) limits them to holding an average of three items in immediate memory, compared to children in first and second grade (~6-9 years old) who can hold an average of four items [20,21].”
Executive Functions and Decoding in Children and Adolescents: a Meta-analytic Investigation
Ober, T. M., Brooks, P. J., Homer, B. D., & Rindskopf, D. (2020) · Educational Psychology Review · doi:10.1007/s10648-020-09526-0 · Cited by 60
Development of sensorimotor synchronization abilities: Motor and cognitive components
Monier, F., & Droit‐Volet, S. (2019) · Child Neuropsychology · doi:10.1080/09297049.2019.1569607 · Cited by 59
“However, these capacities are limited in young children (Cowan, 2016; Gathercole et al., 2004; Pickering, 2001), thus explaining their poorer performance in this phase.”
BackgroundRhythms of human attention and memory: An embedded process perspective
Köster, M., & Gruber, T. (2022) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2022.905837 · Cited by 44
“Brain rhythm Psychological function Key references Counterpart in embedded process model (Cowan, 2016) Implementation on brain structures”
Cognitive and attentional vulnerability to depression in youth: A review
Kertz, S. J., Petersen, D., & Stevens, K. T. (2019) · Clinical Psychology Review · doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2019.01.004 · Cited by 46
Children's long‐term retention is directly constrained by their working memory capacity limitations
Forsberg, A., Guitard, D., Adams, E. J., Pattanakul, D., & Cowan, N. (2021) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13164 · Cited by 36
“, in press) and assisting in the acquisition of concepts (Cowan, 2016).”
InfluentialSelf-citationÖztekin, I., Finlayson, M. A., Graziano, P. A., & Dick, A. S. (2021) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100966 · Cited by 38
“The intraparietal sulcus is a very significant contributor to working memory (Chein et al., 2003; Cowan, 2016; Cowan et al., 2011; Oztekin et al., 2009; Smith & Jonides, 1998; Xu & Chun, 2006), and working memory deficits have been commonly observed in previous ADHD research (Hammer et al., 2015;…”
ResultMakris, Ν., Tachmatzidis, D., Δημητρίου, Α., & Spanoudis, G. C. (2017) · Intelligence · doi:10.1016/j.intell.2017.01.006 · Cited by 37
Elliott, E. M., Morey, C. C., AuBuchon, A. M., Cowan, N., Jarrold, C., Adams, E. J., Attwood, M., Bayram, B., Beeler-Duden, S., Blakstvedt, T. Y., et al. (2021) · Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/25152459211018187 · Cited by 39
“The sources of these age-related improvements are unclear, but these improvements are consistent with either an expanding focus of attention (Cowan, 2016) or an increasing refreshing rate (Gaillard et al., 2011), which are both thought to occur independent of rehearsal.”
Self-citationBerry, E. D. J., Waterman, A., Baddeley, A., Hitch, G. J., & Allen, R. J. (2017) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000427 · Cited by 37
Development of Social Working Memory in Preschoolers and Its Relation to Theory of Mind
He, J., Guo, D., Zhai, S., Shen, M., & Gao, Z. (2018) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.13025 · Cited by 31
Shimi, A. G., & Scerif, G. (2017) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.08.005 · Cited by 31
The role of working memory in long-term learning: Implications for childhood development
Forsberg, A., Adams, E. J., & Cowan, N. (2021) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2021.02.001 · Cited by 40
Self-citationThe developmental neural substrates of item and serial order components of verbal working memory
Attout, L., Magro, L. O., Szmalec, A., & Majerus, S. (2018) · Human Brain Mapping · doi:10.1002/hbm.24466 · Cited by 30
“2019;40:1541–1553. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hbm © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1541 storage tasks, whether they involve additional processing requirements or not (see Cowan, 2016, for a recent discussion of this issue).”
BackgroundA hierarchical model of early brain functional network development
Gao, W. (2025) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2025.04.001 · Cited by 39
Δημητρίου, Α., Golino, H. F., Spanoudis, G. C., Makris, Ν., & Greiff, S. (2021) · Intelligence · doi:10.1016/j.intell.2021.101562 · Cited by 29
Development of the ability to combine visual and acoustic information in working memory
Cowan, N., Li, Y., Glass, B. A., & Saults, J. S. (2017) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.12635 · Cited by 28
“Cowan (2016) reviewed more recent evidence that these additional factors, although clearly important, do not seem to account fully for the development of working memory; capacity, or an attentional resource underlying it, could be a primary developing factor after all (cf. Case, 1995; Pascual-…”
Self-citationPanesi, S., Bandettini, A., Traverso, L., & Morra, S. (2022) · Journal of Intelligence · doi:10.3390/jintelligence10010005 · Cited by 35
“There is a rising consensus that the growth of a limited attentional resource that explains working memory capacity is essentially due to maturation (Cowan 2016; Pascual-Leone and Johnson 2021), although Pascual-Leone’s theory is more detailed in describing its developmental trend.”
BackgroundCuriosity enhances incidental object encoding in 8-month-old infants
Chen, X., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2022) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105508 · Cited by 25
Lewis, C. R., Henderson-Smith, A., Breitenstein, R. S., Sowards, H., Piras, I. S., Huentelman, M. J., Doane, L. D., & Lemery‐Chalfant, K. (2019) · Epigenetics · doi:10.1080/15592294.2019.1583032 · Cited by 24
Kurian, N. C. (2025) · AI Brain and Child · doi:10.1007/s44436-025-00009-z · Cited by 32
“For example, between a child’s second and eighth birthdays, visual scan rates accelerate (De Haan & Johnson, 2005) working memory doubles (Cowan, 2016), speech becomes syntax-rich (Rowe, 2012), and friendships shift from parallel play to negotiated rule-making (Rubin et al., 2006).”
Bhatia, P., Delem, M., Léone, J., Boissin, E., Cheylus, A., Gardes, M., & Prado, J. (2020) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology · doi:10.1177/1747021820940631 · Cited by 24
“They should also have lower arithmetic fluency and working memory ability than adults (Cowan, 2016; De Brauwer et al., 2006; Imbo & Vandierendonck, 2008).”
Auditory and visual category learning in children and adults.
Roark, C. L., Lescht, E., Wray, A. H., et al. (2023) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0001525 · Cited by 22
Russo, G., Bigliassi, M., Ceciliani, A., & Tessari, A. (2022) · Psychology of sport and exercise · doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2022.102186 · Cited by 23
Saneinia, S., Zhai, X., Zhou, R., Gholizadeh, A., Wu, R., & Zhu, S.-J. (2024) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-024-03624-y · Cited by 28
“Miller (1956) and Cowan (2016) congruously suggested that the number of chunks a person can process in memory is fi ve (Cowan 2016; Miller 1956).”
More Is More in Language Learning: Reconsidering the Less‐Is‐More Hypothesis
Brooks, P. J., & Kempe, V. (2018) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/lang.12320 · Cited by 23
“…Less-is-More hypothesis has considerable intuitive appeal due to consensus that processing capacity increases with age, as indicated by developmental studies of working memory, executive functioning, processing speed, and nonverbal intelligence (Anderson, 2002; Cowan, 2016; Fry & Hale, 2000).”
BackgroundChildren’s application of decision strategies in a compensatory environment
Betsch, T., Lehmann, A., Jekel, M., Lindow, S., & Glöckner, A. (2018) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500006562 · Cited by 23
“…it seems rather odd to expect young children to apply WADD because they suffer from cognitive constraints (e.g., age dependent limitations of working memory, Cowan, 2016) and lack pertinent formal knowledge (Piaget & Inhelder, 1951) that motivate them to weight values with probabilities.”
BackgroundEl‐Hamamsy, L., Zapata-Cáceres, M., Marcelino, P., Bruno, B., Zufferey, J. D., Martín, E., & Román-González, . (2022) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1082659 · Cited by 26
“As CT skills relate to students’ numerical, verbal, and non-verbal reasoning abilities (Tsarava et al., 2022), it is likely that the findings align with students’ maturation, increase in working memory (which is required to achieve tasks, Cowan, 2016), and executive functions over time.”
Mental Objects in Working Memory
Cowan, N. (2017) · Advances in child development and behavior · doi:10.1016/bs.acdb.2016.12.001 · Cited by 20
“I have worked on the growth of the mind with respect to one of its most fundamental properties, the number of items retained in working memory (e.g., Cowan, 2016).”
InfluentialSelf-citationExamining the limits of memory-guided planning in 3- and 4-year olds
Blankenship, T. L., & Kibbe, M. M. (2019) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100820 · Cited by 18
“First, we wanted to examine whether we would observe a limit on multi-step memory-guided planning in 3-4-year-old children, similar to limits observed in other memory systems that involve active manipulation of information (e.g. working memory; for reviews see Kibbe, 2015; Cowan, 2016; Simmering & Perone, 2013).”
BackgroundLoeb, F. F., Zhou, X., Craddock, K. E. S., Shora, L., Broadnax, D. D., Gochman, P., CLASEN, L. S., Lalonde, F. M., Berman, R. A., Berman, K. F., et al. (2017) · Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2017.12.009 · Cited by 18
Tone series and the nature of working memory capacity development.
Clark, K. M., Hardman, K. O., Schachtman, T. R., Saults, J. S., Glass, B. A., & Cowan, N. (2017) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000466 · Cited by 18
“Prior working memory studies have suggested development in visual capacity (for a review see Cowan, 2016), visual precision (Burnett Heyes et al., 2012), both together (Simmering & Miller, 2016), and tone precision (Keller & Cowan, 1994).”
InfluentialSelf-citationKibbe, M. M., & Applin, J. B. (2022) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.13813 · Cited by 17
“…infants under 2 years, using nonverbal tasks that do not require explicit responding (e.g., Káldy & Leslie, 2003, 2005; Kibbe & Leslie, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2019; Oakes et al., 2013; Ross-Sheehy et al., 2003), and on children ages 4 and up, using tasks that involve explicit instruction and explicit…”
InfluentialManrique, H. M., Read, D., & WALKER, M. J. (2024) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105543 · Cited by 23
“By 8 – 9 months, infants can focus attention on 3 items, but do not individuate them: “ However, infants and young children would not be able to use the deliberate system adequately to separate the stimulus stream into discrete events …” (Cowan, 2016, p. 248).”
Measuring individual differences in cognitive abilities in the lab and on the web
Ruíz, S., Chen, X., Rebuschat, P., & Meurers, D. (2019) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0226217 · Cited by 16
“Working memory is the capacity to process and hold information at the same time while performing complex cognitive tasks such as language learning, comprehension and production [31].”
BackgroundPanesi, S., & Morra, S. (2021) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101142 · Cited by 20
Daniel, E., Döring, A. K., & Cieciuch, J. (2022) · Journal of Personality · doi:10.1111/jopy.12742 · Cited by 17
“These advances may result from an increase in executive function abilities such as working memory (Cowan, 2016; Lensing & Elsner, 2018) and cognitive flexibility (Buttelmann & Karbach, 2017).”
Decorative animations impair recall and are a source of extraneous cognitive load
Pink, A., & Newton, P. M. (2020) · AJP Advances in Physiology Education · doi:10.1152/advan.00102.2019 · Cited by 16
“Human working memory has a very limited capacity, often presented as “seven, give or take two” (25) and the information contained within it fades very quickly, within seconds, unless it is rehearsed or learned (2, 9).”
BackgroundOff to a Good Start: The Early Development of the Neural Substrates Underlying Visual Working Memory
Fitch, A., Smith, H., Guillory, S. B., & Káldy, Z. (2016) · Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnsys.2016.00068 · Cited by 17
“It is outside of the scope of this mini-review to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire behavioral literature (see Kibbe, 2015; Cowan, 2016; Reynolds and Romano, 2016, in this Research Topic); instead, we will examine whether recent findings from neuroscientific studies of early VWM…”
BackgroundAttention effects in working memory that are asymmetric across sensory modalities
Li, Y., & Cowan, N. (2021) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-021-01142-9 · Cited by 16
“It is important in problemsolving, learning, and communication (e.g., Conway et al., 2005; Cowan, 2016b).”
BackgroundSelf-citationForsberg, A., Adams, E. J., & Cowan, N. (2022) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13283 · Cited by 14
Self-citationMontgomery, J. W., Gillam, R. B., Evans, J. L., Schwartz, S., & Fargo, J. D. (2019) · Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · doi:10.1044/2019_jslhr-l-19-0071 · Cited by 15
“…from a knowledge perspective; it is knowledge of the input and the ability to process or chunk the input in some meaningful way that promotes WM performance (Cowan, 2016; Cowan, Ricker, Clark, Hinrichs, & Glass, 2015; Gilchrist, Cowan, & NavehBenjamin, 2009; Towse, Cowan, Hitch, & Horton, 2008).”
BackgroundResultThe effect of children’s prior knowledge and language abilities on their statistical learning
Stärk, K., Kidd, E., & Frost, R. L. A. (2022) · Applied Psycholinguistics · doi:10.1017/s0142716422000273 · Cited by 16
“…we reduced the length of the sequences (sequences comprised 6 syllables, rather than 8), thereby making allowances for the fact that working memory (Cowan, 2016) and other cognitive processes supporting performance (e.g., processing speed, Kail & Salthouse, 1994) improve across childhood.”
BackgroundGong, L., Guo, D., Gao, Z., & Wei, K. (2022) · Autism Research · doi:10.1002/aur.2853 · Cited by 15
“…that individuals with ASD have intact or even better WM capacity for nonsocial stimuli (Bodner et al., 2019; Lynn et al., 2022; Stevenson et al., 2021), but its early development, especially in preschoolers, was left unchecked(see Cowan, 2016, for a review; Riggs et al., 2006; Simmering, 2012).”
BackgroundChild decision-making: On the burden of predecisional information search
Lindow, S., & Betsch, T. (2018) · Journal of Cognition and Development · doi:10.1080/15248372.2018.1436057 · Cited by 16
“…children in our studies who lacked the full potential of central cognitive functions such as working memory, planning, inhibitory control, and metacognition (for an overview, see Cowan, 2016; Diamond, 2013), weighting information to purposefully guide search should be particularly demanding.”
BackgroundPull the Andon Rope on Working Memory Capacity Interventions Until We Know More
Gillam, S. L., Holbrook, S., Mecham, J., & Weller, D. (2018) · Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools · doi:10.1044/2018_lshss-17-0121 · Cited by 15
A look into the practices and challenges of assessing young EFL learners’ writing in Croatia
Patekar, J. (2021) · Language Testing · doi:10.1177/0265532221990657 · Cited by 15
“In addition, dictation puts quite a strain on children’s working memory, which in young learners is still developing (Cowan, 2016).”
Rapado‐Castro, M., Villar-Arenzana, M., Janssen, J., Fraguas, D., Bombín, I., Castro‐Fornieles, J., Mayoral, M., González-Pinto, A. M., de la Serna, E., Parellada, M., et al. (2021) · Journal of Clinical Medicine · doi:10.3390/jcm10173929 · Cited by 14
Subiza‐Pérez, M., García‐Baquero, G., Fernández‐Somoano, A., Guxens, M., González, L., Tardón, A., Dadvand, P., Estarlich, M., de Castro, M., McEachan, R., et al. (2023) · Health & Place · doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2023.103136 · Cited by 14
El‐Hamamsy, L., Zapata-Cáceres, M., Martín, E., Francesco Mondada, C., Zufferey, J. D., Bruno, B., & Román-González, . (2025) · Technology Knowledge and Learning · doi:10.1007/s10758-024-09777-8 · Cited by 26
“…numerical, verbal, non-verbal, Tsarava et al. 2022) that are related to students’ maturation, increase in working memory (Gathercole et al., 2004; Cowan, 2016), and executive functions (Arf´e et al., 2019; Robertson et al., 2020; Robledo-Castro et al., 2023), thus improving their capacity to…”
Weber, E. M. G., Neubauer, A., Irmer, A., & Schmiedek, F. (2022) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101260 · Cited by 15
The function of perceptual learning
Jenkin, Z. (2023) · Philosophical Perspectives · doi:10.1111/phpe.12186 · Cited by 13
“These infants cannot yet perform the most basic of cognitive tasks such as deductive syllogism (Mody & Carey, 2016; Cesana-Arlotti et al. 2018) or holding multiple items in working memory (Káldy & Leslie, 2005; Kibbe, 2015; Cowan, 2016).”
BackgroundSankalaite, S., Huizinga, M., Pollé, S., Xu, C., de Vries, N., Hens, E., & Baeyens, D. (2023) · Education Sciences · doi:10.3390/educsci13111149 · Cited by 35
Wang, J. J., & Kibbe, M. M. (2024) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13488 · Cited by 13
Malone, L. A., Hill, N. M., Tripp, H. M., Zipunnikov, V., Wolpert, D. M., & Bastian, A. J. (2025) · npj Science of Learning · doi:10.1038/s41539-025-00304-7 · Cited by 12
Guillory, S. B., Gliga, T., & Káldy, Z. (2017) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2017.10.005 · Cited by 12
“Saults, Morey, Mattox, Hismjatullina, et al., 2005), however, there are still many open questions regarding the underlying mechanisms that drive these improvements (see Cowan, 2016; Simmering & Perone, 2013).”
Memory: Normative development of memory systems
Bouyeure, A., & Noulhiane, M. (2020) · Handbook of clinical neurology · doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-64150-2.00018-6 · Cited by 19
Sok, S., Shin, H. W., & Do, J. (2021) · Language Testing · doi:10.1177/0265532221991134 · Cited by 16
Demetriou, A., Spanoudis, G., Makris, N., Golino, H., & Kazi, S. (2021) · Cognitive development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101124 · Cited by 14
Zhang, Q., Liang, Z., Zhang, T., Wang, C., & Wang, T. (2022) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-021-01272-0 · Cited by 12
“Our results show that performance on both WMC tasks progressed with age, which is consistent with previous findings (Camos & Barrouillet, 2011; Cowan, 2016; Frick et al., 2013; Frick et al., 2014; Gathercole et al., 2004).”
ResultThe influence of age, schooling, literacy, and socioeconomic status on serial-order memory
Kolinsky, R., Gabriel, R., Demoulin, C., Gregory, M. M., de Carvalho, K. S., & Morais, J. (2020) · Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science · doi:10.1007/s41809-020-00056-3 · Cited by 1
“Thus, although some aspects of memory certainly improve with maturation (see discussion in e.g., Cowan, 2016), in the present case, when both the task and the material are easy for all age groups, it seems that it is the power of the schooling experience, including literacy acquisition, that shapes…”
BackgroundThe developing impact of verbal labels on visual memories in children.
Overkott, C. S. R., Souza, A. S., & Morey, C. C. (2022) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0001305 · Cited by 11
“We opted for this because previous research has shown that children can store, on average, half of the memory items young adults are able to remember (Cowan, 2016; Cowan et al., 2010, 2011).”
The Role of Working Memory and Attention in Older Workers’ Learning
Angelopoulou, E., Karabatzaki, Z., & Drigas, A. S. (2021) · International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC) · doi:10.3991/ijac.v14i1.20355 · Cited by 13
“It has been estimated that adults’ working memory capacity is in the range of 3 or 4 objects (Cowan, 2001; Luck & Vogel, 1998; as cited in Cowan 2016, p. 7) [11].”
Disentangling processing and storage accounts of working memory development in childhood
Superbia-Guimarães, L., & Cowan, N. (2023) · Developmental Review · doi:10.1016/j.dr.2023.101089 · Cited by 14
Self-citationWhat Makes a UI Simple? Difficulty and Complexity in Tasks Engaging Visual-Spatial Working Memory
Bakaev, M., & Разумникова, О. М. (2021) · Future Internet · doi:10.3390/fi13010021 · Cited by 12
“More recent results from [20,21], where objects with varying color, shape, and spatial location were presented to the subjects, suggest the limitation of 3–4 units.”
Older Adults Benefit from Symmetry, but Not Semantic Availability, in Visual Working Memory
Hamilton, C. J., Brown, L. A., & Rossi‐Arnaud, C. (2018) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02373 · Cited by 11
“…like other higher-order, complex WM tasks, could be considered to exemplify the problem in identifying what specific processes change with age, as the task is likely to involve both domain-specific maintenance and domain-general executive resources (Cowan, 1988, 2005, 2016; Hamilton et al., 2003).”
Which Early Childhood Experiences and Skills Predict Kindergarten Working Memory?
Wang, A. H., & Fitzpatrick, C. (2018) · Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics · doi:10.1097/dbp.0000000000000610 · Cited by 12
The role of goal cueing in kindergarteners’ working memory
Fitamen, C., Blaye, A., & Camos, V. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104666 · Cited by 11
“Since the emergence of the neo-Piagetian theories (Pascual-Leone, 1970), age-related increase in some mental resource was invoked for accounting for cognitive and WM development, a hypothesis that is commonly used in contemporary theories (e.g., Cowan, 2016; Morra, 2000, 2015).”
MethodWorking Memory Constrains Long-Term Memory in Children and Adults: Memory of Objects and Bindings
Forsberg, A., Guitard, D., Adams, E. J., Pattanakul, D., & Cowan, N. (2023) · Journal of Intelligence · doi:10.3390/jintelligence11050094 · Cited by 12
“On the other hand, visual working memory capacity typically shows consistent development throughout school years (e.g., Cowan 2016; Cowan et al. 2011; Gathercole et al. 2004).”
BackgroundSelf-citationChildren’s use of reasoning by exclusion to infer objects’ identities in working memory
Cheng, C., & Kibbe, M. M. (2023) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105765 · Cited by 11
Proactive interference and the development of working memory
Hamilton, M., Ross, A., Blaser, E., & Káldy, Z. (2022) · Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Cognitive Science · doi:10.1002/wcs.1593 · Cited by 12
Experimental Study: Children’s Perceptions Expressed Through Drawings and Coloring
Trifunović, A., Pešić, D., & Čičević, S. (2022) · Perceptual and Motor Skills · doi:10.1177/00315125221104780 · Cited by 17
“It might be possible to better predict and plan children’s classroom learning by combining ideas from cognitive load theory and theories of cognitive development, to better predict the cognitive load capacity present at a particular age (Cowan, 2016; Halford et al., 2007).”
Peter, B., Bruce, L., Raaz, C. V., Williams, E., Pfeiffer, A., & Rogalsky, C. (2020) · Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics · doi:10.1080/02699206.2020.1861103 · Cited by 12
Lewandowska, M., Milner, R., Ganc, M., Włodarczyk, E. A., Dołżycka, J., & Skarżyńśki, H. (2021) · Current Psychology · doi:10.1007/s12144-021-01540-x · Cited by 10
“…or working memory (both of them require keeping in mind the sequences of acoustic elements for a while before they are reported) with their own developmental course until the age of 16 (Cowan, 2016; Gomes, Molholm, Christodoulou, Ritter, & Cowan, 2000; Karns, Isbell, Giuliano, & Neville, 2015).”
BackgroundAeschlimann, E. A., Voelke, A. E., & Roebers, C. M. (2017) · Journal of Intelligence · doi:10.3390/jintelligence5020017 · Cited by 8
“Furthermore, previous studies found that age is related to storage, processing and/or Gf [4,6,12,34,64,65].”
BackgroundCreel, S. C. (2024) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.14157 · Cited by 10
A novel working memory task for preschoolers: sensitivity to age differences from 3-5 years
Boudreau, A. M., Dempsey, E. E., Smith, I. M., & Garon, N. (2017) · Child Neuropsychology · doi:10.1080/09297049.2017.1333592 · Cited by 11
“Although it is clear that considerable age differences are seen on WM tasks from early childhood to adulthood (Alloway & Alloway, 2013; Cowan, 2016; Towse & Hitch, 2007), the nature of those changes is not as clear.”
BackgroundDifferentiation of Two Working Memory Tasks Normed on a Large U.S. Sample of Children 2–7 Years Old
Cowan, N. (2021) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.13562 · Cited by 11
“…maturation, educational level, and status in terms of various developmental learning disabilities (for reviews see Alloway & Alloway, 2013; Cowan, 2014, 2016, 2017b; de Abreu, Conway, & Gathercole, 2010; Gray et al., 2017, 2019; Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007; Holmes et al., in press;…”
InfluentialSelf-citationHolistic Information Integration in Child Decision Making
Lindow, S., Lang, A., & Betsch, T. (2017) · Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · doi:10.1002/bdm.2029 · Cited by 9
Greene, N. R., Forsberg, A., Guitard, D., Naveh‐Benjamin, M., & Cowan, N. (2024) · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · doi:10.1037/xge0001551 · Cited by 7
Self-citationImai-Matsumura, K., & Schultz, D. (2021) · Early Childhood Education Journal · doi:10.1007/s10643-021-01213-1 · Cited by 10
“This may reflect age-related changes in working memory (Cowan, 2017).”
BackgroundLexical Access Speed and the Development of Phonological Recoding during Immediate Serial Recall
AuBuchon, A. M., Elliott, E. M., Morey, C. C., Jarrold, C., Cowan, N., Adams, E. J., Attwood, M., Bayram, B., Blakstvedt, T. Y., Büttner, G., et al. (2022) · Journal of Cognition and Development · doi:10.1080/15248372.2022.2083140 · Cited by 10
“Morey, Christopher Jarrold, Nelson Cowan, Eryn J. Adams, Meg Attwood, Büsra Bayram, Taran Y. Blakstvedt, Gerhard Büttner, Thomas Castelain, Shari Cave, Davide Crepaldi, Eivor Fredriksen, Bret A. Glass, Dominic Guitard, Stefanie Hoehl, Alexis Hosch, Stéphanie Jeanneret, Tanya N. Joseph, Christopher Koch, Jaroslaw R. Le…”
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Cowan, N.
- Affiliations
- University of Missouri (US)
- Corresponding author
- Cowan, Nelson
- ORCID
- Cowan, Nelson
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2016-03
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 239-264
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- PMC
- PMC4800832
- OpenAlex
- W2298970181
- Semantic Scholar
- 3bcc44025be345138a8c741256cdfdbfc906e234
- Cited by
- 225
- References
- 199
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 28 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 23.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Perspectives on Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD021338)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology › Developmental and Educational Neuropsychology
- Keywords
- working memory, cognitive development, working memory capacity, infancy, childhood, attentional control, pattern formation
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Child, Child Development, Psychology, Child, Child, Preschool, Humans, Infant, Memory, Short-Term
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