Structure of Working Memory in Children From 3 to 8 Years Old

TL;DR

This study investigates the structure of working memory in children aged 3 to 8, revealing a four-factor model with distinct verbal, visual, and spatial components, and evidence of an executive control component.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of WM structure in young children using a Bayesian approach and confirms the importance of distinguishing WM components early in development.

Findings

Four-factor WM model best fits data in children 3-8 years old

WM structure is similar across younger and older children

Evidence of an executive control component with modest contribution

Abstract

Several models of working memory (WM) have been proposed in the literature. Most of the research on the architecture of WM is based on adults or older children, but less is known about younger children. In this study, we tested various models of WM on a sample of 739 Italian children from 3 to 8 years old. Participants were assessed with 12 WM tasks, systematically varying the modality and level of executive control required (based on the number of activities to be performed at once: retention alone, ignoring distractors, and dealing with dual tasks). We examined younger children, n = 501, Mage = 56.8 months (SD = 6.4, 48% males) and older children, n = 238, Mage = 80.0 months (SD = 9.0, 58% males) separately using multigroup confirmatory factor analyses. A Bayesian analytical approach was adopted. Our results suggested that a four-factor model distinguishing between verbal, visual, spatial-simultaneous, and spatial-sequential components of WM achieved the best fit. Overall, the WM structure was very similar in the two groups. We further explored this result with an additional model with a central executive factor loaded on high-control tasks only, and found evidence for the presence of an executive control component. The contribution of this factor in terms of explained variance was only modest, however. Our findings demonstrate that it is important to distinguish between WM components in young children.