PROJECT 11: DEVELOPMENT OF VERBAL WORKING MEMORY STRATEGIES IN YOUNG CHILDREN

项目总结/摘要 项目11：幼儿言语工作记忆策略的发展 工作记忆是对信息的暂时存储和加工，有助于在一个特定的环境中完成任务。 广泛的学术和认知技能的儿童和成人。排练，无声地重复着未来-- 记忆的信息，是一种策略，可以实现，以克服存储的限制， 工作记忆目前，在理解工作记忆是如何 策略--特别是排练--发展到成人水平。缺乏关于 复述的发展轨迹提出了重要的理论和临床问题。排练已经 作为一种基础技能，其他工作记忆策略也由此产生，但这一假设 如果没有对排练本身有一个清晰的理解，就不能进行测试。临床上， 旨在改善工作记忆策略的干预措施有可能改善长期的学术水平。 以及表现出工作记忆问题的儿童的认知结果。这项研究的长期目标是 该计划旨在确定个别儿童的工作记忆弱点。一旦这些弱点 可以制定明确的、有针对性的干预措施，以提高更广泛的学术技能，如阅读。 作为第一步，本项目的目标是描述幼儿在哪些环境中 实施排练策略。主要假设是，儿童在年龄方面存在差异， 开始和效率的排练策略，这些个体差异都与 任务的要求和孩子的语言能力。这些假设将通过两个具体的 目的：（1）描述工作记忆资源被充分利用时复述的发展轨迹。 可用或耗尽，（2）描述词汇知识的作用，在早期复述能力的视觉 列出的名单。根据具体目标1，4至8岁的儿童将被监测用于各种排练， 不同长度和排练指令的任务。根据具体目标2，排练使用将被评估为 视觉刺激从具有明显的语言标签（即数字）变为不太明显的语言标签（即 抽象形状）。儿童的语言能力将作为协变量纳入，以控制语言的作用 在排练发展中，经验与年龄是分开的。这种方法是创新的，因为它超越了 小组水平的分析排练，以检查排练在个别儿童在系统的操纵 任务要求。拟议的研究是重要的，因为它直接解决了不一致的， 关于年轻的，典型的发展中国家的儿童排练的发展，推进当前的文学 工作记忆的模型，并奠定了框架，为儿童的干预中断， 工作记忆

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT PROJECT 11: DEVELOPMENT OF VERBAL WORKING MEMORY STRATEGIES IN YOUNG CHILDREN Working memory, the temporary storage and processing of information, contributes to performance on a wide range of academic and cognitive skills in children and adults. Rehearsal, the silent repetition of to-be- remembered information, is one strategy which can be implemented to overcome the storage limitations of working memory. At the present time, there is a fundamental gap in understanding how working memory strategies—particularly rehearsal—develop into adult levels. The lack of knowledge regarding the developmental trajectory of rehearsal poses important theoretical and clinical problems. Rehearsal has been proposed as a foundational skill from which other working memory strategies emerge, but this hypothesis cannot be tested without first having a clear understanding of rehearsal development itself. Clinically, interventions aimed at refining working memory strategies have the potential for improving long-term academic and cognitive outcomes in children who display working memory problems. The long-term goal of this research program is to identify individual children’s working memory weaknesses. Once these weaknesses are identified, targeted interventions can be developed that will improve broader academic skills, such as reading. As a first step, the objective of the present project is to characterize the contexts in which a young child implements rehearsal strategies. The primary hypotheses are that children differ with regard to the age-of- onset and efficiency of rehearsal strategies and that these individual differences are related to both the demands of the task and the child’s language ability. These hypotheses will be tested by pursuing two specific aims: (1) Characterize the developmental trajectory of rehearsal when working memory resources are available or depleted, and (2) Describe the role of lexical knowledge in early rehearsal abilities of visually presented lists. Under Specific Aim 1, children ages 4 to 8 will be monitored for rehearsal use in a variety of tasks that vary in length and rehearsal instructions. Under Specific Aim 2, rehearsal use will be evaluated as visual stimuli change from having obvious verbal labels (i.e. digits) to less obvious verbal labels (i.e. pictures of abstract shapes). Children’s language ability will be included as a covariate to control for the role of language experience separate from age in rehearsal development. This approach is innovative because it moves beyond group-level analyses of rehearsal to examine rehearsal in individual children under systematically manipulated task demands. The proposed research is significant because it directly addresses inconsistencies in the literature regarding the development of rehearsal in young, typically-developing children, advancing current models of working memory as well as lay the framework for interventions for children with disruptions to working memory.