Audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in 6-13 year old school children

Abstract

The neural processes subserving working memory, and brain structures underlying this system, continue to develop during childhood. We investigated the effects of age and gender on audiospatial and visuospatial working memory in a nonclinical sample of school-aged children using n-back tasks. The results showed that auditory and visual working memory performance improves with age, suggesting functional maturation of underlying cognitive processes and brain areas. The gender differences found in the performance of working memory tasks suggest a larger degree of immaturity in boys than girls at the age period of 6-10 yr. The differences observed between the mastering of auditory and visual working memory tasks may indicate that visual working memory reaches functional maturity earlier than the corresponding auditory system.

Figure 1

The behavioral performance of auditory and visual 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back tasks in the three age groups of children. (A) The mean reaction times and percentages of incorrect responses. (B) The mean percentages of missed and multiple responses. Vertical lines indicate SEM; (+) the difference is significant between 6–8 and 9–10 year olds, P <0.05; (++) P <0.01; (*) the difference is significant between 6–8 and 11–13 year olds, P <0.05; (**) P <0.01; (●) the difference is significant between 9–10 and 11–13 year olds, P <0.05.

Figure 2

The behavioral performance of auditory and visual 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back tasks in boys and girls in the three age groups of children. (A) The mean reaction times, (B) mean percentages of incorrect responses, and (C) mean percentages of multiple responses. (F ) Female; (M) male; (Vis) visual tasks; (Aud) auditory tasks. Vertical lines indicate SEM. (*) The difference between boys and girls is significant, P <0.05.

Figure 3

The descriptive measures of working memory performance. (A) Subjective difficulty ratings in the three age groups of children. (B) Illustration of the distribution of reported strategies used in the auditory and visual working memory tasks. Vertical lines indicate SEM. (+) The difference is significant between 6–8 and 9–10 year olds, P <0.05; (++) P <0.01; (*) the difference is significant between 6–8 and 11–13 year olds, P <0.05; (**) P <0.01.

Figure 4

The experimental design. (A) The temporal order of the 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back tasks in the three consecutive blocks of each session. (7 min, 17 sec) The duration of each individual block. (B) Illustration of the visuospatial working memory tasks. The match trials for 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back tasks are marked with vertical arrows. (100 msec) The duration of each stimulus; (3125 msec) the delay period between the stimuli. (C) Illustration of the audiospatial working memory tasks. (L) Left; (M) middle; (R) right.