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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The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.
Miller, G. A. (1956) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/h0043158 · Cited by 17,812 · cited 2×
“Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960). Plans and the structure of behavior.”
BackgroundThe magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.
Miller, G. A. (1994) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.101.2.343 · Cited by 17,559
Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. (1974) · Psychology of Learning and Motivation · doi:10.1016/s0079-7421(08)60452-1 · Cited by 9,860
The magical number 4 in short-term memory: A reconsideration of mental storage capacity
Cowan, N. (2001) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x01003922 · Cited by 6,779 · cited 4×
“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
Gogtay, N., Giedd, J. N., Lusk, L., Hayashi, K. M., Greenstein, D., Vaituzis, A. C., Nugent, T. F., Herman, D. H., Clasen, L. S., Toga, A. W., et al. (2004) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0402680101 · Cited by 5,604
Plans and the structure of behavior.
Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960) · doi:10.1037/10039-000 · Cited by 4,630
The capacity of visual working memory for features and conjunctions
Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1997) · Nature · doi:10.1038/36846 · Cited by 4,265
The information available in brief visual presentations
Sperling, G. (1960) · Psychological Monographs: General and Applied · doi:10.1037/h0093759 · Cited by 4,042 · cited 2×
“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
- Baddeley A. D., 1986, Working memory
- Chi M. T. H., 1978, Children’s thinking: What develops?, 73
- Ebbinghaus H., 1913, Ueber das gedächtnis: Untersuchen zur experimentellen psychologie
- 10.1073/pnas.0402680101 · DOI · Paper page
- Kahn J. V., 1976, American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 80, 663
- Marti E., 2012, After Piaget
- Pascual-Leone J., 2011, Cognitive development and working memory: From neoPiagetian to cognitive approaches, 13
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Items 101–200 of 238
Ebert, K. D., Pham, G. T., Levi, S., & Eisenreich, B. R. (2023) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-023-02078-5 · Cited by 9
“Increases in knowledge (i.e., familiarity with stimuli) have been proposed as an alternative explanation for these gains, but studies attempting to control for knowledge have continued to support working memory gains (Cowan, 2016).”
Adams, E. J., & Cowan, N. (2020) · Journal of Cognition and Development · doi:10.1080/15248372.2020.1844710 · Cited by 8
“This type of load should be consequential if there is an attention-dependent source of working memory storage that is not restricted to the verbal domain (Cowan, 2016), as should the auditory-verbal load.”
BackgroundMethodSelf-citationDecoding the content of working memory in school-aged children
Turoman, N., Fiave, P. A., Zahnd, C., deBettencourt, M. T., & Vergauwe, E. (2023) · Cortex · doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2023.10.019 · Cited by 6
Does appearance affect children's selective trust in robots' social and emotional testimony?
Cao, X., Wu, Y., Nielsen, M., & Wang, F. (2024) · Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2024.101739 · Cited by 8
Simmering, V. R., & Wood, C. M. (2017) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/dev0000358 · Cited by 7
“Through a series of manipulations and controls, Cowan and colleagues have shown that other cognitive changes, like strategies or knowledge, cannot account for developmental improvements (see Cowan, 2016, for review).”
Working memory develops at a similar rate across diverse stimuli
Mathy, F., & Friedman, O. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104735 · Cited by 7
Development of information integration in the visual working memory of preschoolers
Guo, D., Wang, Y., Liao, Y., et al. (2022) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.13820 · Cited by 7
Weber, E. M. G., Pakzad, S., Brod, G., & Bunge, S. A. (2023) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105655 · Cited by 7
The Role of Language in Temporal Cognition in 6- to 10-Year-Old Children
DeNigris, D., & Brooks, P. J. (2018) · Journal of Cognition and Development · doi:10.1080/15248372.2018.1483372 · Cited by 7
“…growth in cognitive abilities, such as abstract analytical and analogical reasoning, executive functioning, and working memory, which contribute to self-regulation, social competence, and academic success in school (Cowan, 2016; Devine, White, Ensor, & Hughes, 2016; Sameroff & Haith, 1996).”
BackgroundNeurobiological insights from the study of deafness and sign language
Cardin, V., Campbell, R., MacSweeney, M., Holmer, E., Rönnberg, J., & Rudner, M. (2020) · Trends in language acquisition research · doi:10.1075/tilar.25.09car · Cited by 7
Items in visual working memory are more susceptible to visual interference while in-use.Preprint
Lout, E., Golomb, J. D., & Dube, B. (2023) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/28xds · Cited by 4
Shen, Y. (2025) · Contemporary Educational Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych.2025.102366 · Cited by 6
Morra, S., Patella, P., & Muscella, L. (2024) · Journal of Cognition · doi:10.5334/joc.387 · Cited by 6
Encoding colors and tones into working memory concurrently: A developmental investigation
Cowan, N., & Guitard, D. (2024) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.13552 · Cited by 6
Self-citationThe Role of Working Memory in Implicit Memory: A Developmental Perspective
Yang, Y., Chen, M., He, W. Y., & Merrill, E. C. (2020) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100929 · Cited by 11
Graphomotor memory in Exner’s area enhances word learning in the blind
Mizuochi, T., Itou, K., Makuuchi, M., Kato, B., Ikeda, K., & Nakamura, K. (2021) · Communications Biology · doi:10.1038/s42003-021-01971-z · Cited by 7
Inguscio, B. M. S., Cartocci, G., Sciaraffa, N., Nasta, C., Giorgi, A., Nicastri, M., Giallini, I., Greco, A., Babiloni, F., & Mancini, P. (2021) · Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience · doi:10.1155/2021/4158580 · Cited by 7
Developmental trajectory of time perception from childhood to adolescence
Li, Y., Gu, J., Zhao, K., & Fu, X. (2022) · Current Psychology · doi:10.1007/s12144-022-03526-9 · Cited by 5
“…general short-term memory performance increased until 12 years old, the complex working memory enhanced steeply extending up to 15-and 16-year-olds (Cowan, 2016; Gathercole, 1999), and the speed of information processing sharply increases in childhood and slowly develops in adolescence (Kail,…”
Gelman, S. A., & DeJesus, J. M. (2019) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108770422.009 · Cited by 6
Working Memory Training in Typically Developing Children: A Multilevel Meta-AnalysisPreprint
Sala, G., & Gobet, F. R. (2019) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/p3vku · Cited by 6
Blaser, E., & Káldy, Z. (2024) · Developmental Review · doi:10.1016/j.dr.2025.101187 · Cited by 6
Stuck on the Last: The Last-Presented Benefit as an Index of Attentional Refreshing in Adolescents
Valentini, B., & Vergauwe, E. (2022) · Journal of Intelligence · doi:10.3390/jintelligence11010004 · Cited by 5
“Relatedly, the evidence in favor of adult-like performance levels in 10-year-olds might be linked to the paradoxical finding that infants seem to have higher working memory capacity than young children (see Cowan 2016; Forsberg et al. 2022).”
Feldon, D. F., & Litson, K. (2021) · Educational Psychology Review · doi:10.1007/s10648-021-09596-8 · Cited by 5
“…1995; Gobet and Simon 1996; Masunaga and Horn 2000), (2) shift focus of attention to appropriate LTM traces as needed to optimize processing (Cowan 2016; Unsworth and Engle 2007), or (3) preclude the unnecessary allocation of attention to irrelevant or unproductive cues (Engle 2002; Barrett…”
BackgroundThinking inside the box: Mental manipulation of working memory contents in 3- to 7-year-old children
Reindl, E., Parkash, D., Völter, C. J., & Seed, A. M. (2021) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101068 · Cited by 5
“Research from the last three decades has shown that the mental processes that can be carried out on WM representations undergo rapid improvements during the pre-school period and beyond across a variety of tasks (Cowan, 2016; Garon et al., 2008; Hughes, 2011; Simmering & Perone, 2013).”
BackgroundAngelopoulou, E., & Drigas, A. S. (2022) · Technium Social Sciences Journal · doi:10.47577/tssj.v30i1.6296 · Cited by 5
Theorien der kognitiven Entwicklung
Siegler, R. S., Eisenberg, N., DeLoache, J. S., & Saffran, J. R. (2016) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-662-47028-2_4 · Cited by 6
More is More in Language Learning: Reconsidering the Less-is-More HypothesisPreprint
Brooks, P. J., & Kempe, V. (2018) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/5wfh9 · Cited by 4
Metacontrol instructions lead to adult-like event segmentation in adolescents
Zhou, X., Ghorbani, F., Roessner, V., Hommel, B., Prochnow, A., & Beste, C. (2025) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2025.101521 · Cited by 4
Ren, T., Wang, J., Li, M., Ding, X., & Cheng, C. (2025) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106182 · Cited by 4
Hall, G. J., Putzeys, S., & Miller‐Cotto, D. (2022) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101226 · Cited by 6
Two Attentional Processes Subserving Working Memory Differentiate Gifted and Mainstream Students
Johnson, J., Howard, S. J., & Pascual‐Leone, J. (2024) · Journal of Cognition · doi:10.5334/joc.370 · Cited by 4
“Controlled attention is central in theories of WM, such as Cowan’s (Cowan, 2016) scope of attention , Engle’s (2010) executive attention , and Ruchkin and colleagues’ (Ruchkin et al., 2003) attentional pointer system .”
The Automatic Selective Perception Model
Shafer, V. L. (2024) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781009105767.010 · Cited by 4
Gaze cues facilitate incidental learning in children aged 7–10 years, but arrow cues do not
Ishikawa, M., & Yoshioka, A. (2025) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-025-02657-x · Cited by 6
“During the 7-to 10-year age range, children experience substantial growth in working memory capacity and strategy use, which has been linked to implicit memory performance (Cowan, 2016; Yang & Merrill, 2018).”
Protracted perceptual learning of auditory pattern structure in spoken language
Creel, S. C. (2019) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2019.07.003 · Cited by 4
Davies, S. J., Bourke, L., & Harrison, N. (2019) · Reading and Writing · doi:10.1007/s11145-019-09974-3 · Cited by 5
“…the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that children at such an early age have been tested on their ability to bind audio-visual information using novel stimuli as a measure of the constraints associated with the episodic buffer (e.g., Alloway et al., 2004; Cowan, 2016; Gray et al., 2017).”
Why and how to study working memory development
Cowan, N. (2020) · L’Année psychologique · doi:10.3917/anpsy1.202.0135 · Cited by 4
“As detailed by Cowan (2016), where Jean Piaget delineated some developmental increases in cognitive abilities throughout childhood, neo-Piagetians proposed that these cognitive changes indirectly resulted from improvements in the foundations of cognitive processing, including processing speed…”
Self-citationSetiawan, L., Hendrayana, Y., & Mahendra, A. (2020) · JURNAL PENELITIAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN · doi:10.21831/jpipfip.v13i2.29279 · Cited by 12
“Dengan kata lain, working memory merupakan informasi yang tetap aktif dan mudah diakses, bisa digunakan pada tugas-tugas kognitif di dalam kecerdasan yang bervariasi (Cowan, 2016).”
Bigozzi, L., Pezzica, S., & Malagoli, C. (2020) · European Journal of Psychology of Education · doi:10.1007/s10212-020-00515-z · Cited by 6
“…due to the evolution of important cognitive features that support attentional skills, such as WM and inhibition, between 6 and 9 years of age (Cowan, 2016; Pureza et al., 2013), and given the documented role of primary education in developing children’s early conceptual numerical knowledge,…”
BackgroundAttention Components and Spelling Accuracy: Which Connections Matter?
Bigozzi, L., Malagoli, C., Pecini, C., Pezzica, S., Vezzani, C., & Vettori, G. (2021) · Children · doi:10.3390/children8070539 · Cited by 4
“, [94,99]), allowed us to draw implications for the education and clinical setting.”
Theorien der kognitiven Entwicklung
Siegler, R. S., Saffran, J. R., Gershoff, E. T., & Eisenberg, N. (2021) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-662-62772-3_4 · Cited by 5
Auditory and visual category learning in children and adultsPreprint
Roark, C. L., Lescht, E., Wray, A. H., & Chandrasekaran, B. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/5ynu6 · Cited by 3
Δημητρίου, Α., Spanoudis, G. C., Christou, C., et al. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/f9sd2 · Cited by 4
Καλτσά, Μ., Babacheva, E., Fotiadou, G., Goutsiou, E., Kantziou, K., Nicolaidis, K., & Soubasi, V. (2024) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1384486 · Cited by 3
“…stages examining how children identify, use and store information with critical milestones being related to changes in the amount of information that the child can sort, classify and use (Gathercole, 1999; Baddeley, 2003; Gathercole et al., 2003; Baddeley, 2012; Cowan, 2016 among others).”
BackgroundHow profiles of general intelligence change with age: A comprehensive model
Demetriou, A., Makris, N., Spanoudis, G., Karousou, A., Kazi, S., Economacou, D., & Bikos, T. (2026) · Cognitive development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101735 · Cited by 4
Chen, J., Wei, Y., Xue, K., Gao, X., Zhang, M., Han, S., Wen, B., Wu, G., & Cheng, J. (2024) · Frontiers in Neurology · doi:10.3389/fneur.2024.1445599 · Cited by 4
“In contrast, in psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, age-related developmental processes exert a discernible influence on the activation state of the PFC, consequently affecting the maturation of cognitive function during adolescence (46, 47).”
An fNIRS Study of Applicability of the Unity–Diversity Model of Executive Functions in Preschoolers
Xie, S., Gong, C., Lu, J., Zhang, H., Wu, D., Chi, X., Li, H., & Chang, C. (2022) · Brain Sciences · doi:10.3390/brainsci12121722 · Cited by 5
“fundamental to concept learning [72] and is a critical factor in cognitive development [73,74].”
BackgroundWeber, E. M. G., Neubauer, A. B., Irmer, A., et al. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/ascxn · Cited by 3
Children’s working memory develops at similar rates for sequences differing in compressibility
Mathy, F., Fartoukh, M., Friedman, O., Gauvrit, N., & Guida, A. (2020) · L’Année psychologique · doi:10.3917/anpsy1.202.0175 · Cited by 2
“For instance, data from Gathercole, Ambridge, Wearing, and Pickering (2004) re-analyzed by Cowan (2016) suggest a rate of development of memory capacity in childhood that is quite independent of the properties of different types of stimuli (e.g., words, non-words, and digits).”
Determine the impact of Emotive Intelligent Spaces on children’s behavioural and cognitive outcomes
Chen, S., Cerruti, M., Ghandi, M., Tsao, L., & Sermeno, R. (2023) · Cogent Education · doi:10.1080/2331186x.2023.2281850 · Cited by 3
“The potential overstimulation effect of the lights is detrimental particularly to young children because their ability to sustain focused attention is very limited (Cowan, 2016).”
BackgroundInfluentialCrossing the Boundary: No Catastrophic Limits on Infants’ Capacity to Represent Linguistic Sequences
Reoyo‐Serrano, N., Dimakou, A., Nascimben, C., Bastianello, T., Lucangeli, D., & Benavides‐Varela, S. (2025) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.70015 · Cited by 2
“Infants, like adults, effortlessly perceive the exact number of elements when fewer than three (or two) objects are displayed, which is about the limit in working memory capacity (Cowan 2016, 2022; Endress and Szabó 2017; Knops et al. 2014).”
Early literacy and executive function profiles in Spanish-English emergent bilinguals
Shen, Y. (2025) · Learning and Individual Differences · doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2025.102775 · Cited by 2
Nicastri, M., D’Alessandro, H. D., Consolino, P., et al. (2025) · International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology · doi:10.1016/j.ijporl.2025.112605 · Cited by 2
Gonthier, C., & Gavornikova-Baligand, Z. (2023) · Attention Perception & Psychophysics · doi:10.3758/s13414-023-02659-8 · Cited by 2
“…of reactivation of memory traces as defined by the TBRS model has mostly been tested in the context of developmental studies, and has been claimed as a possible factor contributing to developmental changes of WMC (e.g., Cowan, 2016; see also Bayliss et al., 2005; Plancher et al., 2017).”
Identification of commonalities across different languages
Green, K. (2023) · Frontiers in Language Sciences · doi:10.3389/flang.2023.1172925 · Cited by 2
Lin, J., Jiang, Y., Xiao, X., Zhu, Q., Wang, G., Lin, Q., & Jiang, F. (2024) · Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine · doi:10.5664/jcsm.11062 · Cited by 2
Breuer, L.-E., Lindow, S., & Betsch, T. (2024) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104470 · Cited by 2
The development of self-initiated visuo-spatial working memory
Gorohovsky, N., Koor, T., & Magen, H. (2024) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106043 · Cited by 2
Kim, S. Y., Yang, W. F. Z., Jiwani, Z., Hamm, E. H., & Singh, S. (2025) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/67506 · Cited by 2
Effects of Using One or More Manipulatives on Strategy Mastery and Generalization
Laski, E. V., Ermakova, A., Vasilyeva, M., & Halloran, K. (2021) · The Journal of Experimental Education · doi:10.1080/00220973.2021.1973358 · Cited by 2
“Alternatively, using a single manipulative may be more beneficial for younger children because it places less demands on their naïve symbolic understanding and limited working memory (Cowan, 2016; Uttal et al., 1997).”
Eschman, B., & Ross‐Sheehy, S. (2023) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/09567976221136509 · Cited by 2
“However, results from these tasks also highlight several points of commonality and provide valuable insight for honing developmental theory (Cowan, 2016).”
BackgroundNormal development of the brain: a survey of joint structural–functional brain studiesPreprint
Namiranian, R., Malakshan, S. R., Moghaddam, H. A., Khadem, A., & Jafari, R. (2021) · bioRxiv · doi:10.1101/2021.04.20.440563 · Cited by 3
“Working memory is a limited amount of information that is temporarily accessible for cognitive tasks such as language comprehension and production, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making (Cowan, 2016; Simms et al., 2018).”
BackgroundHall, G. J., Putzeys, S., & Miller‐Cotto, D. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/bt796 · Cited by 2
Δημητρίου, Α., Golino, H. F., Spanoudis, G. C., MAKRIS, N., & Greiff, S. (2021) · PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/ykde3 · Cited by 2
Osman, D. M., Hamid, A. A. A., Maged, S., & Hady, A. F. A. (2024) · The Egyptian Journal of Otolaryngology · doi:10.1186/s43163-024-00569-6 · Cited by 1
“In addition to development of cognitive skills during the school years is also considered including developmental increases in knowledge, filtering out of irrelevant distractions, encoding and rehearsal strategies, and pattern formation [31].”
Khalaila-Zbidat, A., & Karawani, H. (2025) · Hearing Research · doi:10.1016/j.heares.2025.109345 · Cited by 1
“…alongside the relationship between SiN perception and WM, is essential — especially given that both WM and the neural encoding of speech continue to develop during the school years (e.g. Alloway et al., 2009; Baddeley, 2012; Cowan, 2016; Klingberg, 2010; Krizman et al., 2015; Skoe et al., 2015).”
Older adults are impaired by distractors presented during working memory encoding
Carrasco, C. D., Jones, K. T., & Berryhill, M. E. (2025) · Psychological Research · doi:10.1007/s00426-025-02197-y · Cited by 1
Khalaila-Zbidat, A., Gordin, A., & Karawani, H. (2026) · Hearing Research · doi:10.1016/j.heares.2026.109540 · Cited by 1
Attention Control and Working Memory, Varying Definitions and Measurements
Byrnes, D., & Was, C. A. (2026) · International Journal of Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.3390/ijcs2010004 · Cited by 1
“This is how Cowan (2016, p. 247) describes WMC, as “how many items can occupy the focus of attention.””
InfluentialKoolhaas, C., Blaser, E., & Káldy, Z. (2026) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.70152 · Cited by 1
Kong, Y., Lim, J.-Y., An, S.-J., et al. (2022) · Family and environment research · doi:10.6115/fer.2022.007 · Cited by 1
Cognitive development of imitation of intransitive gestures: an analysis of hand and finger errors
Lesourd, M., & Rey, A. E. (2022) · Journal of Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1080/20445911.2022.2052886 · Cited by 1
“Similarly, working memory capacities continue to mature from school years to late adolescence (Cowan, 2016; Ferguson et al., 2021).”
BackgroundYoung, J. (2022) · Time and Mind · doi:10.1080/1751696x.2022.2103727 · Cited by 2
“While it is unclear whether chunk size increases with age, the number of chunks held in working memory does increase over time, with young children recalling approximately 2.5 chunks and older children able to recall three or four (Gilchrist, Cowan, and Naveh-Benjamin 2009, 261; Cowen 2014, 2016).”
InfluentialModelling complex span performance: activation, attentional capacity, and interference
Muscella, L., & Morra, S. (2025) · Developmental Review · doi:10.1016/j.dr.2025.101188 · Cited by 1
Nguyen, C. F. (2025) · International journal of AI in language education. · doi:10.54855/ijaile.25223 · Cited by 1
Colombani, A., Peter, V., Mai, Q. Y., Saksida, A., Boll‐Avetisyan, N., Tuomainen, O., & Sharma, M. (2025) · Language Cognition and Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/23273798.2025.2539136 · Cited by 1
“…working memory capacity and attention, have been shown to differ between age groups (e.g. Booth et al., 2003; Hoyer et al., 2021; for a review, see Cowan, 2016), we hypothesised that adults ’ cognitive and linguistic maturity facilitated learning and improved task performance, with individual…”
McGill, C. I., & Elliott, E. M. (2017) · Autism and child psychopathology series · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-71210-9_6 · Cited by 1
Ünal, G., Özge, D., & Marinis, T. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01688 · Cited by 1
“Complex WM tasks comprise the backward digit span, listening span, counting span, operational span (only used with older children and adults), and (versions of) the Stroop task (Gathercole, 1999; Cowan, 2016).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialNormal development of the brain: a survey of joint structural–functional brain studies
Namiranian, R., Malakshan, S. R., Moghaddam, H. A., Khadem, A. A., & Jafari, R. (2022) · Reviews in the Neurosciences · doi:10.1515/revneuro-2022-0017 · Cited by 4
CogMemLM: Human-Like Memory Mechanisms Improve Performance and Cognitive Plausibility of LLMs
Thoma, L., Weyers, I., Çano, E., Schweter, S., Mueller, J. L., & Roth, B. (2023) · BabyLM Challenge · doi:10.18653/v1/2023.conll-babylm.15 · Cited by 1
“In order to account for cognitive growth throughout infancy and childhood (Cowan, 2016), we increase the number of available working memory slots and thereby the possible length of percepts across curriculum training steps: curriculum 1 (C 1): 4 slots, percepts of length 2-12 characters; C 2: 5,…”
Changes in brain morphology and working memory capacity over childhoodPreprint
Bathelt, J., Gathercole, S. E., Johnson, A., et al. (2016) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/069617 · Cited by 1
Curiosity Enhances Incidental Object Encoding in 8-month-old InfantsPreprint
Chen, X., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2021) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/6bwfm · Cited by 1
“At the same time, information sampling is also affected by developmental change in working memory (Cowan, 2016), and it is possible that enhanced memory capacity in adults enables them, but not older children, to retain incidental information despite a focus of curiosity on the information…”
Δημητρίου, Α., Golino, H. F., Spanoudis, G. C., Greiff, S., & Makris, N. (2021) · PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/nbxu3 · Cited by 1
Manrique, H. M., Read, D., & WALKER, M. J. (2023) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/byxsj · Cited by 1
Scalable Probabilistic Modeling of Working Memory PerformancePreprint
Rojo, M., Maddula, P., Fu, D., Guo, M., Zheng, E., Grande, Á., Pahor, A., Jaeggi, S. M., Seitz, A. R., Goffney, I. M., et al. (2023) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/nq6yg · Cited by 1
Абсатова, К. А., Machinskaya, R. I., & Frolova, K. A. (2019) · Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology · doi:10.1007/s11055-019-00813-0
“…common factors – formation of the central executive mechanism [Baddeley and Hitch, 2000] and/or the mechanisms of voluntary attention [Conklin, 2007; Cowan, 2016 (review)] and increases in the effectiveness of information processing (processing effi ciency), which facilitates the combining of…”
BackgroundResultThe rate of forgetting over time in working memory during early childhood
Bertrand, R., Stan-Zahno, I., & Camos, V. (2020) · L’Année psychologique · doi:10.3917/anpsy1.202.0157
How children make sense of the world: A perceptual learning account
de Bordes, P. F. (2021) · University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) · doi:10.33612/diss.157936930
Logic: Development of Logical Operations ☆
Pascual‐Leone, J., Escobar, E. M. R., & Johnson, J. (2017) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-809324-5.21957-3
The importance of awareness of our human limits: A view from cognitive psychology and beyond
Cowan, N. (2020) · The Cognitive Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.53841/bpscog.2020.1.5.9
Self-citationEducational Implications of Private Speech for Children’s Problem-solving Abilities
Liu, J. (2023) · Journal of Education Humanities and Social Sciences · doi:10.54097/ehss.v8i.4535
The importance of awareness of our human limits: A view from cognitive psychology and beyond
Cowan, N. (2020) · Developmental Psychology Forum · doi:10.53841/bpsdev.2020.1.91.12
Self-citationDecoding the content of working memory in school-aged childrenPreprint
Turoman, N., Fiave, P. A., Zahnd, C., et al. (2023) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2023.02.10.527990
“…& Hitch, 1974; Cowan, 1998; Miller, 1956), has been recognized as the primary determinant of cognitive development in children (for review see Cowan, 2016), and a key predictor of scholastic skills and academic achievement (e.g., Alloway & Alloway, 2010; Bayliss et al., 2003; Bull et al.,…”
Working Memory and Executive Functions
Bortfeld, H., & Bunge, S. A. (2024) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108595827.011
Children’s representation of specialized skilled movements: The cases of snowboarding and aikido
Sosic, A., Panesi, S., & Morra, S. (2024) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-024-01522-x
“First, endogenous (i.e., mental) attention that is the core of working memory capacity according to current theories, and the capacity of which grows with age (Cowan, 2016; Pascual-Leone & Johnson, 2021; Portrat et al., 2009).”
Schneider, J. M. (2024) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2024.06.002
Skill learning in the developing brain: Interactions of control and representation systems
Fandakova, Y., & Wenger, E. (2024) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2024.07.002 · Cited by 2
Expertise Reversal Effect and Teaching French as a Foreign Language Listening Skills (Experiment 4)
Jiang, D. (2024) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-981-97-2317-1_11
The effect of visual working memory consolidation on long-term memory for Chinese characters
Chen, L., Chen, Y., Wang, L., & Wang, C. (2025) · Cognitive Systems Research · doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2025.101348
Efficient measurement of dynamic working memory
Kong, G., Frisken, I., Liaw, G. J., et al. (2025) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-025-01724-x
“Controlling for such alternate strategies has been a major consideration in the study of the developmental time course of working memory (Cowan, 2016).”
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
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-08, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).
A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-08 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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