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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“In the terms of Braver (2012), the high-span adults had a proactive performance strategy, filtering out the irrelevant items at the time of encoding, whereas the low-span adults had a reactive performance strategy, filtering out the irrelevant items only when that was unavoidable at the time of test.”
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“There has been some disappointment in attempts to improve children’s abilities through working memory training (e.g., Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2013), and this might be expected until more is known about what the mechanisms of working memory development are and what role attention plays.”
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“Better information processing, in turn, was said to allow more complex concepts to be comprehended, harder problems to be solved, and so on (Burtis, 1982; Case, 1985, 1995; Commons et al., 1998; Demetriou et al., 2002; Fischer, 1980; Halford, 1993; Halford et al., 2007; Halford, Wilson, & Phillips, 1998; Pascual-Leone…”
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“Theoretically, this might occur because of how 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 (see Fig.”
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Storage of 7 +/- 2 short-term memories in oscillatory subcycles
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“An alternative to the decay-based interpretation of refreshing is that there is a limited processing cycle time, within which all working memory items that are going to be retained must be activated in a serial manner (e.g., Lisman & Idiart, 1995).”
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BackgroundOperational efficiency and the growth of short-term memory span
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“Chi (1978) showed that knowledge is critically important for working memory.”
BackgroundChanging concepts of working memory
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Self-citationWorking Memory Underpins Cognitive Development, Learning, and Education
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“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 (e.g., Cowan, Elliott et al., 2005; Cowan, 2014; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Jar…”
InfluentialSelf-citationObject permanence in five-month-old infants
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“Some work, going back at least to Sperling (1960) and Phillips (1974), has focused on the transfer of information from visual sensory memory into a capacity-limited type of memory.”
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Self-citationDissociable neural mechanisms supporting visual short-term memory for objects
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The logic theory machine-A complex information processing system
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“…and production, reading, mathematics, and problem solving (e.g., Cowan, 2014; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Jarrold & Bayliss, 2007; Maehler & Schuchardt, 2009; L. Siegel & Linder, 1984; L. S. Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2001).”
Binding in short-term visual memory.
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“Theoretically, this might occur because of how 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 (see Fig.”
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A feature model of immediate memory
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“These activated features are subject to decay over time (Darwin, Turvey, & Crowder, 1972; Ricker & Cowan, 2014; Sperling, 1960; Treisman, 1964) and subject to interference from subsequent input with similar features (Nairne, 1990).”
BackgroundVisual Working Memory Represents a Fixed Number of Items Regardless of Complexity
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“Further work showed the importance of free attention even after a mask because higher-level consolidation continued (Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; Ricker & Cowan, 2014).”
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Binding in short-term visual memory.
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“We presented the contextual items as line drawings to avoid interference from the nontested colors, a type of interference seen previously in adults (Wheeler & Treisman, 2002).”
MethodSpontaneous verbal rehearsal in a memory task as a function of age
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ResultPhase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory
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“Working memory also allows one to consider characteristics of a new situation so that an effective response can be found; in that respect, working memory is key to fluid intelligence (e.g., Geary, 2004).”
BackgroundNeural Evidence for a Distinction between Short-term Memory and the Focus of Attention
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“Miller (1956) famously discussed the fact that there is a basic limit in the capability of working memory: approximately seven items.”
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How Many Variables Can Humans Process?
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“Entering items into working memory requires about 50 ms/item before a mask (Vogel et al., 2006; Woodman & Vogel, 2005).”
MethodRhythmic Sampling within and between Objects despite Sustained Attention at a Cued Location
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“…and production, reading, mathematics, and problem solving (e.g., Cowan, 2014; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Jarrold & Bayliss, 2007; Maehler & Schuchardt, 2009; L. Siegel & Linder, 1984; L. S. Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2001).”
The Power of Numerical Discrimination
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“adults’ capacity could be a coincidence, inasmuch as adults appear to have a capacity that actually reaches an asymptotic level closer to 3 items (e.g., Cowan, Fristoe, Elliott, Brunner, & Saults, 2006; Rouder et al., 2008; Zhang & Luck, 2008); no one suspects that infants have a higher capacity than adults.”
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Separating cognitive capacity from knowledge: a new hypothesis
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“Better information processing, in turn, was said to allow more complex concepts to be comprehended, harder problems to be solved, and so on (Burtis, 1982; Case, 1985, 1995; Commons et al., 1998; Demetriou et al., 2002; Fischer, 1980; Halford, 1993; Halford et al., 2007; Halford, Wilson, & Phillips, 1998; Pascual-Leone…”
BackgroundSelf-citationAn auditory analogue of the sperling partial report procedure: Evidence for brief auditory storage
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BackgroundPerceptual organization influences visual working memory
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Conceptual competence and children's counting
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Refreshing: A Minimal Executive Function
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Hierarchical Complexity of Tasks Shows the Existence of Developmental Stages
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“…in turn, was said to allow more complex concepts to be comprehended, harder problems to be solved, and so on (Burtis, 1982; Case, 1985, 1995; Commons et al., 1998; Demetriou et al., 2002; Fischer, 1980; Halford, 1993; Halford et al., 2007; Halford, Wilson, & Phillips, 1998; Pascual-Leone,…”
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“Numerous adult studies have shown that there is some memory for the configuration or structure across items, in addition to memory of individual items (e.g., Brady & Tenenbaum, 2013; Jiang, Olson, & Chun, 2000; Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003; Xu & Chun, 2007).”
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“…in turn, was said to allow more complex concepts to be comprehended, harder problems to be solved, and so on (Burtis, 1982; Case, 1985, 1995; Commons et al., 1998; Demetriou et al., 2002; Fischer, 1980; Halford, 1993; Halford et al., 2007; Halford, Wilson, & Phillips, 1998; Pascual-Leone, 1970).”
BackgroundIndividual Differences in Recovery Time From Attentional Capture
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“In agreement with the notion seen in Gold et al. that filtering does not in fact underlie individual differences, individuals with relatively poor working memory did not look at irrelevant items any more than other individuals did (but see Fukuda & Vogel, 2011, for caution).”
ResultShort-term memory processes in children with reading and arithmetic learning disabilities.
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Cowan, N. (2011) · Neuropsychologia · doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.01.035 · Cited by 190 · cited 1×
“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).”
BackgroundSelf-citationModels of verbal working memory capacity: What does it take to make them work?
Cowan, N., Rouder, J. N., Blume, C. L., & Saults, J. S. (2012) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/a0027791 · Cited by 187
Self-citationWhen visual and verbal memories compete: Evidence of cross-domain limits in working memory
Morey, C. C., & Cowan, N. (2004) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/bf03196573 · Cited by 179 · cited 1×
“Morey and Cowan (2004) confirmed this point 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.”
BackgroundSelf-citationThe Number and Quality of Representations in Working Memory
Zhang, W., & Luck, S. J. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611417006 · Cited by 178 · cited 3×
“Illustration of hypothetical processing modes in the hidden-objects infant procedure of Zosh and Feigenson (2015) with three items in working memory.”
BackgroundMethodThe inhibition of automatic saccades in early infancy
Johnson, M. H. (1995) · Developmental Psychobiology · doi:10.1002/dev.420280504 · Cited by 173 · cited 1×
“It is also possible for the deliberate route to override the automatic route to control head and eye movements, even in infants (e.g., Johnson, 1995).”
BackgroundRepresentation of Objects and Events
Keen, R. E. (2003) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01234 · Cited by 169
Why do young infants fail to search for hidden objects?
Renée Baillargeon, B., Graber, M., Devos, J., & Black, J. (1990) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/0010-0277(90)90059-s · Cited by 167
Visual grouping in human parietal cortex
Yaoda Xu, A., & Chun, M. M. (2007) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0705618104 · Cited by 167 · cited 1×
“Numerous adult studies have shown that there is some memory for the configuration or structure across items, in addition to memory of individual items (e.g., Brady & Tenenbaum, 2013; Jiang, Olson, & Chun, 2000; Woodman, Vecera, & Luck, 2003; Xu & Chun, 2007).”
BackgroundCowan, N., Nugent, L. D., Elliott, E. M., Ponomarev, I., & Saults, J. S. (1999) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00080 · Cited by 163
Self-citationThe mental effort requirement of cumulative rehearsal: A developmental study
Guttentag, R. E. (1984) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(84)90060-2 · Cited by 161 · cited 1×
“…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).”
BackgroundA Neural Region of Abstract Working Memory
Cowan, N., Li, D., Moffitt, A. J., Becker, T. M., Martin, E. A., Saults, J. S., & Christ, S. E. (2011) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.2011.21625 · Cited by 160
Self-citationCentral and peripheral components of working memory storage
Cowan, N., Saults, J. S., & Blume, C. L. (2014) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/a0036814 · Cited by 156
Self-citationPascual‐Leone, J., & Smith, J. M. (1969) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(69)90107-6 · Cited by 155
Changes in the capacity of visual working memory in 5- to 10-year-olds
Riggs, K. J., McTaggart, J., Simpson, A., & Freeman, R. P. J. (2006) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2006.03.009 · Cited by 152
The acquisition of routines in child language
Gleason, J. B., & Weıntraub, S. (1976) · Language in Society · doi:10.1017/s0047404500006977 · Cited by 151 · cited 1×
“These parts are gradually learned (Berko Gleason & Weintraub, 1976).”
BackgroundIntact attentional control of working memory encoding in schizophrenia.
Gold, J., Fuller, R., Robinson, B. M., McMahon, R., Braun, E. L., & Luck, S. (2006) · Journal of Abnormal Psychology · doi:10.1037/0021-843x.115.4.658 · Cited by 148 · cited 1×
“Providing a simpler index of filtering and working memory capacity, Gold et al. (2006) used a behavioral procedure in which participants received arrays with multiple types of objects (e.”
MethodThe development of visual working memory capacity during early childhood
Simmering, V. R. (2011) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2011.10.007 · Cited by 146 · cited 5×
“…(Cowan, 2001; Luck & Vogel, 1998), with smaller estimates in preschoolers and children in the early elementary school years of about 2 to 2.5 items (e.g., Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005; Cowan, Nugent, Elliott, Ponomarev, & Saults, 1999; Riggs, McTaggart, Simpson, & Freeman, 2006; Simmering, 2012).”
BackgroundInfluentialMemory span: a review of the literature.
Blankenship, A. B. (1938) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/h0061086 · Cited by 138 · cited 1×
“(In turn, Dempster owes a debt to Blankenship, 1938).”
BackgroundConceptual knowledge increases infants' memory capacity
Feigenson, L., & Halberda, J. (2008) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0709884105 · Cited by 138 · cited 1×
“The process of forming and using chunks does not depend on language, given that it has been shown to occur even in preverbal infants (Feigenson & Halberda, 2008).”
BackgroundCowan, N., AuBuchon, A. M., Gilchrist, A. L., Ricker, T. J., & Saults, J. S. (2011) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01060.x · Cited by 137
Self-citationFancher, R. E. (1979) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 132
Seven‐year‐olds allocate attention like adults unless working memory is overloaded
Cowan, N., Morey, C. C., AuBuchon, A. M., Zwilling, C. E., & Gilchrist, A. L. (2009) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00864.x · Cited by 132 · cited 1×
“3 (Cowan et al., 2010) except that items were presented one at a time at a slow, serial, 1 item/s rate.”
BackgroundSelf-citationVergauwe, E., Barrouillet, P., & Camos, V. (2009) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/a0015859 · Cited by 128
Core verbal working-memory capacity: The limit in words retained without covert articulation
Chen, Z., & Cowan, N. (2008) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology · doi:10.1080/17470210802453977 · Cited by 126 · cited 2×
“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).”
BackgroundSelf-citationLanguage development as related to stage 6 object permanence development
Corrigan, R. (1978) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s0305000900007406 · Cited by 125 · cited 1×
“A child was ready to represent objects or people with words just after the child was able to remember that objects remained in existence even when hidden; typically, this realization occurred within the first 2 years of life (Corrigan, 1978; Kahn, 1976; Moore & Meltzoff, 1978).”
BackgroundDevelopmental change in working memory strategies: From passive maintenance to active refreshing.
Camos, V., & Barrouillet, P. (2011) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0023193 · Cited by 121 · cited 2×
“Moreover, Camos and Barrouillet (2011) found that in children age 6 years and younger, the cognitive load relation did not hold; instead, information was lost as a function of time rather than cognitive load, suggesting that children that young do not engage in the same maintenance process of refreshing the items in t…”
BackgroundRicker, T. J., & Cowan, N. (2013) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/a0034301 · Cited by 119 · cited 2×
“Further work showed the importance of free attention even after a mask because higher-level consolidation continued (Jolicoeur & Dell’Acqua, 1998; Ricker & Cowan, 2014).”
Self-citationMähler, C., & Schuchardt, K. (2008) · Journal of Intellectual Disability Research · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2008.01105.x · Cited by 112 · cited 1×
“…and production, reading, mathematics, and problem solving (e.g., Cowan, 2014; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Jarrold & Bayliss, 2007; Maehler & Schuchardt, 2009; L. Siegel & Linder, 1984; L. S. Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2001).”
13-Month-Olds’ Understanding of Social Interactions
Choi, Y., & Luo, Y. (2015) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797614562452 · Cited by 112 · cited 1×
“They have shown evidence of a mental faculty allowing enumeration of small numbers of objects (Wynn, 1996), transitive inferences (Mou, Province, & Luo, 2014), and false beliefs (Choi & Luo, 2015).”
BackgroundWoodman, G. F., & Vogel, E. K. (2005) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00790.x · Cited by 103
Tam, H., Jarrold, C., Baddeley, A., & Sabatos‐DeVito, M. (2010) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.05.006 · Cited by 102
Working Memory (Oxford Psychology Series, No 11)
Baddeley, A. D. (1986) · Cited by 102
Hardman, K. O., & Cowan, N. (2014) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/xlm0000031 · Cited by 100
Self-citationHitch, G. J., Halliday, M. S., Schaafstal, A. M., & Heffernan, T. (1991) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(91)90033-o · Cited by 97
Looking and search measures of object knowledge in preschool children.
Hood, B. M., Cole‐Davies, V., & Dias, M. (2002) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/0012-1649.39.1.61 · Cited by 96
Shipstead, Z., & Engle, R. W. (2012) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1037/a0028467 · Cited by 87
Majerus, S., Cowan, N., Peters, F., Calster, L. V., Phillips, C. L. M., & Schrouff, J. (2014) · Cerebral Cortex · doi:10.1093/cercor/bhu189 · Cited by 87 · cited 1×
“In the future, this inferential method could be augmented, inasmuch as there are separate positive markers in studies of functional magnetic resonance imaging for the control of attention, dependent on frontal lobe areas (for a review, see Kane & Engle, 2002), and the indexing of items in working memory for attended i…”
MethodSelf-citationDevelopment of visual working memory precision in childhood
Heyes, S. B., Zokaei, N., van der Staaij, I., Bays, P. M., & Husain, M. (2012) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01148.x · Cited by 86
Orienting Attention Within Visual Short-Term Memory: Development and Mechanisms
Shimi, A. G., Nobre, A. C., Astle, D. E., & Scerif, G. (2013) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/cdev.12150 · Cited by 83
Schutte, A. R., & Spencer, J. P. (2009) · Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance · doi:10.1037/a0015794 · Cited by 83 · cited 1×
“The finding may also be compatible with the dynamic systems view of development, in which parameters of activation and inhibition mature to produce more stable representations in working memory with age (Schutte & Spencer, 2009; Simmering & Patterson, 2012).”
ResultWhat Do Infants Remember When They Forget? Location and Identity in 6-Month-Olds’ Memory for Objects
Kibbe, M. M., & Leslie, A. M. (2011) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797611420165 · Cited by 80 · cited 2×
“Kibbe and Leslie (2011) found that when 6-month-old infants 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, the one that had disappeared behind the other occluder.”
BackgroundEncoding strategy and not visual working memory capacity correlates with intelligence
Cusack, R., Lehmann, M., Veldsman, M., & Mitchell, D. J. (2009) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/pbr.16.4.641 · Cited by 77
Developmental changes in visual short-term memory in infancy: evidence from eye-tracking
Oakes, L. M., Baumgartner, H. A., Barrett, F. S., Messenger, I. M., & Luck, S. J. (2013) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00697 · Cited by 76
Capacity limits in list item recognition: Evidence from proactive interference
Cowan, N., Johnson, T. D., & Saults, J. S. (2004) · Memory · doi:10.1080/09658210344000206 · Cited by 75 · cited 1×
“For example, Cowan, Johnson, and Saults (2005) presented word lists followed by a probe word, the required response being to indicate whether the probe word was present in the list.”
BackgroundSelf-citationDomain-general and domain-specific functional networks in working memory
Li, D., Christ, S. E., & Cowan, N. (2014) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.08.028 · Cited by 74
Self-citationPSYCHO‐LOGIC: A POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVE TO PIAGET'S FORMULATION
McLaughlin, G. (1963) · British Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-8279.1963.tb00563.x · Cited by 74 · cited 4×
“Until we understand why working memory improves, we will not understand limits on how many operations can be carried out while the necessary data are held in mind (Case, 1995; McLaughlin, 1963; Pascual-Leone, 1970) or how many items can be interconnected to form a new concept (Halford, Cowan, & Andrews, 2007).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialCapacity-based explanations of working memory growth: A brief history and reevaluation.
Case, R. (1995) · Cited by 73
Developmental differences in working memory: Where do they come from?
Gaillard, V., Barrouillet, P., Jarrold, C., & Camos, V. (2011) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2011.05.004 · Cited by 71
Knowledge cannot explain the developmental growth of working memory capacity
Cowan, N., Ricker, T. J., Clark, K. M., Hinrichs, G. A., & Glass, B. A. (2014) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/desc.12197 · Cited by 71 · cited 1×
“Dempster (1978) created word series with low word-toword association values to limit chunking.”
BackgroundSelf-citationExogenous attention influences visual short‐term memory in infants
Ross‐Sheehy, S., Oakes, L. M., & Luck, S. J. (2010) · Developmental Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.00992.x · Cited by 69 · cited 1×
“Ross-Sheehy, Oakes, and Luck (2011) used a multipleexposure procedure and found that when there was a moving pre-cue (inasmuch as one array item rotated), even 5-month-old infants preferred the stream in which the rotating object changed color from frame to frame over the stream in which the…”
MethodDevelopment of working memory for verbal–spatial associations
Cowan, N., Saults, J. S., & Morey, C. C. (2006) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.04.002 · Cited by 68 · cited 1×
“Cowan, Saults, and Morey (2006) found effects of suppression less vulnerable to the psychometric concerns because a complex pattern of results differed between 9- and 10-year old children versus adults.”
BackgroundSelf-citationCapacity increase and chunking in the development of short-term memory
Burtis, P. J. (1982) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(82)90068-6 · Cited by 68 · cited 5×
“In contrast, Burtis (1982) varied the opportunity for chunking by using letter pairs that were easy to chunk (e.g., “MM”), hard to chunk (e.g., “FB”), or intermediate (e.g., “FM,” as in a type of radio).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Development of Mental Processing
Δημητρίου, Α., Mouyi, A., & Spanoudis, G. C. (2010) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9780470880166.hlsd001010 · Cited by 66
Memory span and short-term memory capacity: A developmental study
Dempster, F. N. (1978) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/0022-0965(78)90122-4 · Cited by 65 · cited 3×
“The present review is related in spirit to an earlier review that Dempster (1981) carried out on the development of memory span, the length of list that can be repeated without error.”
BackgroundResultThe search for what is fundamental in the development of working memory
Cowan, N., Saults, J. S., & Elliott, E. M. (2002) · Advances in child development and behavior · doi:10.1016/s0065-2407(02)80050-7 · Cited by 63
Self-citationAn adult model of preschool children’s speech memory
Cowan, N., Cartwright, C., Winterowd, C., & Sherk, M. (1987) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/bf03198385 · Cited by 62
Self-citationThe neural mechanisms of object working memory: what is where in the infant brain?
Káldy, Z., & Sigala, N. (2004) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2004.01.002 · Cited by 62
Varieties of Visual Working Memory Representation in Infancy and Beyond
Kibbe, M. M. (2015) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721415605831 · Cited by 60
The Growth of Memory in School Children
Bolton, T. L. (1892) · The American Journal of Psychology · doi:10.2307/1411616 · Cited by 60 · cited 1×
“Related investigations focusing on immediate memory followed, including the rapid apprehension of several objects ( Jevons, 1871) as well as memory span and its improvement with child development (Bolton, 1892; Jacobs, 1887).”
BackgroundJarrold, C., & Citroën, R. (2013) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0028771 · Cited by 58 · cited 1×
“…young children attain a lower level of performance on lists of short, phonologically dissimilar items, there is less room for further decreases to result from less favorable stimulus qualities, such as phonological similarity among the list items ( Jarrold & Citroën, 2013; Jarrold & Hall, 2013).”
BackgroundGilchrist, A. L., Cowan, N., & Naveh‐Benjamin, M. (2009) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.05.006 · Cited by 58 · cited 1×
“To examine the role of memory with knowledge controlled, Gilchrist, Cowan, and Naveh-Benjamin (2009) used verbal sentence materials.”
Self-citationWhat’s the object of object working memory in infancy? Unraveling ‘what’ and ‘how many’
Kibbe, M. M., & Leslie, A. M. (2013) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2013.05.001 · Cited by 56 · cited 1×
“Infants can apparently individuate three items sometime around the end of the first year (Kibbe & Leslie, 2013).”
BackgroundOakes, L. M., & Bauer, P. J. (2007) · Cited by 49
Rethinking Speed Theories of Cognitive Development
Cowan, N., Elliott, E. M., Saults, J. S., Nugent, L. D., Bomb, P., & Hismjatullina, A. (2005) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01666.x · Cited by 48
Self-citationPersistence of Memory for Ignored Lists of Digits: Areas of Developmental Constancy and Change
Cowan, N., Nugent, L. D., Elliott, E. M., & Saults, J. S. (2000) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1006/jecp.1999.2546 · Cited by 47
Self-citationOakes, L. M., & Luck, S. J. (2013) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781118597705.ch8 · Cited by 46 · cited 1×
“…respond well on procedures with only a single item to be remembered, and at most 2 months later, when infants can respond well on procedures with several items in a series or an array to be remembered (for reviews, see Kibbe, in press; Oakes & Luck, 2013; Simmering, 2012; Zosh & Feigenson, 2015).”
BackgroundThe Development of Rehearsal in Verbal Short-Term Memory
Jarrold, C., & Hall, D. (2013) · Child Development Perspectives · doi:10.1111/cdep.12034 · Cited by 41 · cited 1×
“…young children attain a lower level of performance on lists of short, phonologically dissimilar items, there is less room for further decreases to result from less favorable stimulus qualities, such as phonological similarity among the list items ( Jarrold & Citroën, 2013; Jarrold & Hall, 2013).”
BackgroundThe Changing Face of Attentional Development
Ristic, J., & Enns, J. T. (2015) · Current Directions in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0963721414551165 · Cited by 41 · cited 1×
“It is clear that many functions of selective attention improve throughout childhood (Rueda, 2013), although it is not always clear if the observed improvements are entirely maturational and causal or if some of them can be viewed as consequences of other developmental changes (Ristic & Enns, 2015).”
BackgroundThe development of visual short-term memory for multifeature items during middle childhood
Riggs, K. J., Simpson, A., & Potts, T. (2011) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.11.006 · Cited by 40
Developmental changes in speech rate and memory span: A causal relationship?
Hulme, C., & Muir, C. (1985) · British Journal of Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.2044-835x.1985.tb00969.x · Cited by 40 · cited 1×
“…Dempster, 1978, chunking efficiency; Gaillard et al., 2011, attention-based refreshing rate), and others who have concluded that these confounding mechanisms do not have that impact (Burtis, 1982, chunking efficiency; Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2006, speaking rate; Hulme & Muir, 1985, rehearsal rate).”
BackgroundA developmental theory of mental attention: Its application to measurement and task analysis
Johnson, J. P.-L. A. J. (2010) · doi:10.4324/9780203845837-8 · Cited by 40
Rueda, M. R. (2013) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988693.013.0015 · Cited by 39
Can infants make transitive inferences?
Mou, Y., Province, J. M., & Luo, Y. (2013) · Cognitive Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2013.11.003 · Cited by 38
Luck, S. J., & Vogel, E. K. (1998) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(98)01143-7 · Cited by 36 · cited 1×
“Estimates of working memory capacity from such procedures are typically in the range of 3 or 4 objects in adults (Cowan, 2001; Luck & Vogel, 1998), with smaller estimates in preschoolers and children in the early elementary school years of about 2 to 2.5 items (e.g., Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005;…”
BackgroundInfluentialThe Development of Memory in Infancy and Childhood
Courage, M. L., & Cowan, N. (2022) · Psychology Press eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781003016533 · Cited by 34
Self-citationWhat do two-year-olds understand about hidden-object events?
Mash, C., Novak, E., Berthier, N. E., & Keen, R. E. (2006) · Developmental Psychology · doi:10.1037/0012-1649.42.2.263 · Cited by 32
Kahn, J. V. (1976) · PubMed · Cited by 31
Integration of weight and distance information in young children: The role of relational complexity
Andrews, G., Halford, G. S., Murphy, K. A., et al. (2008) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2008.07.005 · Cited by 31
Variation in Working Memory Due to Typical and Atypical Development
Jarrold, C., & Bayliss, D. M. (2008) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195168648.003.0006 · Cited by 31 · cited 1×
“…and production, reading, mathematics, and problem solving (e.g., Cowan, 2014; Cowan & Alloway, 2009; Cowan, Elliott, et al., 2005; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Jarrold & Bayliss, 2007; Maehler & Schuchardt, 2009; L. Siegel & Linder, 1984; L. S. Siegel & Ryan, 1989; Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2001).”
A list-length constraint on incidental item-to-item associations
Cowan, N., Donnell, K., & Saults, J. S. (2013) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-013-0447-7 · Cited by 30
Self-citationArray heterogeneity prevents catastrophic forgetting in infants
Zosh, J. M., & Feigenson, L. (2014) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.11.042 · Cited by 28 · cited 7×
“For example, a 10-year-old might succeed at the task of Zosh and Feigenson (2015) with four hidden items or more by counting items as they disappear into the box (e.g., Gelman & Meck, 1983) and might succeed at the procedure of Oakes et al.”
BackgroundResultInfluentialMall, J. T., Morey, C. C., Wolff, M. J., & Lehnert, F. (2014) · Attention Perception & Psychophysics · doi:10.3758/s13414-013-0610-2 · Cited by 27
Working Memory Period: The Endurance of Mental Representations
Towse, J. N., Hitch, G. J., Hamilton, Z., Peacock, K. A., & Hutton, U. M. Z. (2004) · The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A · doi:10.1080/02724980443000098 · Cited by 24 · cited 1×
“Under some circumstances, presumably when covert recitation can assist recall, capacity is affected by how long it takes to say each chunk (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975; Towse et al., 2005; G. Zhang & Simon, 1985).”
BackgroundSimmering, V. R., & Patterson, R. (2012) · Cognitive Development · doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2012.08.001 · Cited by 19 · cited 1×
“The finding may also be compatible with the dynamic systems view of development, in which parameters of activation and inhibition mature to produce more stable representations in working memory with age (Schutte & Spencer, 2009; Simmering & Patterson, 2012).”
ResultFeature binding and the processing of global–local shapes in bilingual and monolingual children
Cottini, M., Pieroni, L., Spataro, P., Devescovi, A., Longobardi, E., & Rossi‐Arnaud, C. (2014) · Memory & Cognition · doi:10.3758/s13421-014-0467-1 · Cited by 14 · cited 6×
“Could the ability to reinstate the context of a recognition cue improve with age? Cowan, Saults, and Clark (2015) Arrays of colored squares were followed by a probe square for recognition, which was sometimes surrounded by markers of where the other squares had been.”
BackgroundInfluentialCowan, N., Saults, J. S., & Clark, K. M. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.002 · Cited by 10 · cited 1×
“To examine this possibility, Cowan, Saults, and Clark (2015) presented arrays of colored objects (circles, tested on 80% of the trials, and triangles, tested on the remaining 20%).”
BackgroundSelf-citationThe developmental course of two children who could talk backward five years ago
Cowan, N., & Leavitt, L. A. (1987) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s0305000900013015 · Cited by 7 · cited 1×
“Occasionally, it is possible to find, say, a situation in which maturation occurs in the absence of further practice of a certain skill (e.g., Cowan & Leavitt, 1987), but that type of situation usually seems unavailable to help one separate out the basic factors of development.”
BackgroundSelf-citation
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Sorted by citations
Neural Perspectives on Cognitive Control Development during Childhood and Adolescence
Crone, E. A., & Steinbeis, N. (2017) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.01.003 · Cited by 287
“Both rule-based and internalized cognitive control processes show developmental changes over time in behavioral tasks, such as protracted development of both rule-based working memory manipulation [36,66] and internalizing delay discounting [64] or giving trust [67], but these behavioral patterns are possibly associat…”
Short-term memory based on activated long-term memory: A review in response to Norris (2017).
Cowan, N. (2019) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000199 · Cited by 159
“They have been discussed with respect to capacity and dual tasks in the case of child development (e.g., Cowan, 2016) and aging (e.g., Rhodes et al., 2019).”
Self-citationWorking memory, attention and their relationship: A theoretical overview
Angelopoulou, E., & Drigas, A. S. (2021) · Research Society and Development · doi:10.33448/rsd-v10i5.15288 · Cited by 223
Adams, E. J., Nguyen, A. T., & Cowan, N. (2018) · Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools · doi:10.1044/2018_lshss-17-0114 · Cited by 180
“Cowan (2016, 2017b) summarized work addressing the question of what accounts for developmental differences in working memory.”
BackgroundSelf-citationWorking memory training in typically developing children: A multilevel meta-analysis
Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2020) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-019-01681-y · Cited by 148
“…is, the maximum amount of information that WM can store and manipulate—steadily increases throughout infancy and childhood up to adolescence (Cowan, 2016; Gathercole, Pickering, Ambridge, & Wearing, 2004), due to both maturation and an increase in knowledge (Cowan, 2016; Jones, Gobet, &…”
Background
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.
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