Working memory, attention, and time: Childhood development and adult function

描述（由申请人提供）：这是竞争性延续/续期的修订。由2001年7月1日至2006年6月30日期间继续进行自1984年获资助的工作。在此期间，有1本书、37篇期刊文章和14个章节与儿童时期的工作记忆及其发展有关。工作记忆是一种过程的集合，它将有限的信息保存在一种特别容易获取的形式中，以便在进行中的认知任务中使用。为了巩固理论进展，我强调了最近对两类过程的作用的研究：那些需要注意和努力的过程，以及那些自动发生的过程。我们对小学生和成人工作记忆的研究使我们对这段时间内的发展有了更清晰的认识，包括注意力范围和控制的变化（例如，Cowan， Fristoe等人，出版中）。我们的儿童研究也提供了对成人处理理论的见解。例如，最能预测心理能力的工作记忆任务似乎是那些无法有效利用隐蔽语言排练的任务；不一定是像传统观点认为的那样包含单独存储和处理组件的任务（Cowan， Elliott等人，2005）。我们目前的目标是解决三个基本问题：(1)工作记忆的存储形式抽象到足以跨越不同类型的代码（即，中央记忆）的作用是什么？(2)注意力是用来存储信息，还是仅仅用来保护存储的信息不受干扰？最后，(3)容量和检索速度之间的关系如何？尽管检索速度和记忆能力之间的相关性很高，但在实验中，提高检索速度并没有提高儿童的记忆能力（Cowan， Elliott等人，2006）。为了检验注意力在工作记忆存储中的作用，后续研究涉及到各种程序（例如，双任务设计，以探测哪个过程干扰哪类记忆；语言-空间关联记忆测试，以识别抽象、交叉编码、中心类型的记忆）。在多词组块教学过程中，使用言语反应时间来评估组块中注意相关工作记忆的容量。这项研究可能有助于澄清与工作记忆有关的一系列认知障碍（例如，学习和语言障碍以及注意力缺陷）。它可以表明工作记忆的正常功能是依赖于注意力来存储还是仅仅依赖于处理信息，这些信息对制定临床治疗和诊断方案具有实际意义。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a revision of a competing continuation / renewal. The period 7/1/2001 - 6/30/2006 continued work funded since 1984. This period resulted in 1 book, 37 journal articles, and 14 book chapters related to working memory and its development in childhood. Working memory is the collection of processes that keep limited information in an especially accessible form for use in ongoing cognitive tasks. To build on theoretical progress, I emphasize recent research on the roles of two types of processes: those requiring attention and effort, and those taking place automatically. Our research on working memory in elementary school children and adults is sharpening notions of what develops in that time range, including changes in both the scope and control of attention (e.g., Cowan, Fristoe et al., in press). Our child research also provides insight into theories of adult processing. For example, the working memory tasks that best predict mental aptitudes seem to be those for which covert verbal rehearsal cannot be used efficiently; not necessarily tasks that include separate storage and processing components as conventional wisdom suggests (Cowan, Elliott et al., 2005). Our current aims address three basic questions: (1) What is the role of working-memory storage in a form abstract enough to extend across different types of codes (i.e., a central memory)? (2) Is attention used to store information, or only to defend the stored information from interference? Finally, (3) How are capacity and retrieval speed related? Even though correlations between retrieval speed and memory ability are high, experimentally increasing this speed did not improve capacity in children (Cowan, Elliott et al., 2006). To examine the role of attention in working-memory storage, the proposed followup research involves various procedures (e.g., dual-task designs to probe which processes interfere with which types of memory; verbal-spatial association memory tests to identify an abstract, cross-code, central type of memory). Speech response timing is used with multi-word chunk teaching procedures to estimate the capacity of attention- related working memory in chunks. The research could help to clarify a wide range of cognitive disorders that involve working memory (e.g., learning and language disabilities and attention deficits). It could indicate whether normal functioning of working memory depends on attention for storage or just for processing information that is of practical import in formulating plans for clinical treatment and diagnosis.